I’d like to reach out to all within our community to inspire you on the top-five medical discoveries in 2024.
There are more than 10,000 people in the West Midlands living with HIV infection.
PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, is medicine people at risk for HIV take to prevent getting the virus from sex or injection drug use.
The journal Science has named a new drug called Lenacapavir as its breakthrough of the year.
This is an injectable drug taken every six months that prevents people from acquiring HIV infection.
An interim analysis, announced on September 12, demonstrated Lenacapavir’s remarkable effectiveness in preventing HIV infection in those at risk.
Schizophrenia is a mental health condition where you may see, hear or believe things that are not real.
It affects a significant number of patients within our community.
A new antipsychotic medication for schizophrenia called Cobenfy (Xanomeline/trospium chloride), which is the first potential breakthrough for this condition in a decade, may ease the debilitating symptoms associated with the disease, such as hearing voices, hallucinating, illogical or delusional thinking and being suspicious of other people.
And it doesn’t appear to cause side-effects, such as weight gain, pacing and drowsiness — issues that force some patients taking older anti-schizophrenia drugs to abandon their medical treatment.
This year gene therapy allowed a deaf child to hear for the first time.
The otoferlin (OTOF) gene plays an integral role in our ability to hear through the production of a protein which allows sounds to be communicated from the ear to the brain.
A small number of people around the world are born with an inherited mutation which means that this gene is defective, leaving them profoundly deaf.
It was this year that a first in-human gene therapy procedure treated inherited hearing loss in an 11-year-old boy by using viruses to place a single, small dose of functioning OTOF genes in the cells of his inner ear.
The operation was a huge success and two weeks after the experimental procedure the child could hear sounds for the first time in his life which gradually grew in strength and clarity.
Ever since doctors and scientists realised that damage to DNA causes cancer, they have been searching for an easy way to correct damaged DNA.
In 2013 this led to the advent of CRISPR technology which is akin to a microscopic scissors that cuts out defective DNA to treat illness.
This has now led to curative treatments for sickle cell disease and thalassaemia, inherited blood disorders that cause anaemia which is a low blood count.
It was on August 8 that Casgevy, a one-off gene therapy based on CRISPR technology, was approved for use on the NHS in England and by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to treat and potentially cure older children and adults with a severe form of thalassaemia.
Finally, it was this year that a world-first stem cell treatment was used to restore vision to four people with damaged corneas.
The cornea is the clear outer layer at the front of the eye effectively serving as the window to the outside world.
Medicine is advancing at an exponential rate and we are now entering an era where the hope of curing diseases once considered incurable is now beginning to transition towards realistic expectation.
Your GP would have access to up-to-date information on advancements in medicine and would be able to advise you on new treatments as they emerge.
I’m certain that our community will be much healthier in 2025.
Our columnist Dr Jason Seewoodhary is a former Worcestershire GP.