5 Medical Breakthroughs and Surprises in 2023

For health and medicine people, every new year serves up its own remarkable record of discoveries. Here are five of 2023’s finest.

1) Sickle Cell Treatment Crispr (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) is a technology used in research to selectively modify parts of DNA. This month, after one year’s success in clinical trials, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved its use to treat sickle-cell disease by interfering with a faulty gene that causes red blood cells to clog blood vessels triggering severe pain and fatigue in its mostly Black victims. Next up? Follow-up to identify side effects. Hopefully none – other than the expected high price.

2) Modern MRNA Vaccines Messenger RNA (MRNA) is a molecule in body cells that carries messages from your DNA to places where protein is created. Initially, MRNA vaccines were developed to counter the Ebola virus. After that researchers aimed for a cancer vaccine, but when COVID hit, first things being first, they shifted to delivering a new respiratory in record time. Now, with an armament of COVID vaccines in the medicine chest, work on an anti-cancer vaccine (and one to fight the HIV virus) will likely resume.

3) Cancelled Cold Cure For years, phenylephrine was thought to relieve congestion by reducing the swelling of blood vessels in the nasal passages. That made it key ingredient in many over-the-counter cold and allergy medications. But this year, by unanimous vote, a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversight committee ruled phenylephrine in pills such as Sudafed PE, Vicks Nyquil Sinex Nighttime Sinus Relief and Benadryl Allergy Plus Congestion totally doesn’t do the job. As Susan Blalock, a retired professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy in North Carolina and an advisory committee member, put it to NBC News: “The evidence is pretty compelling. I don’t think additional data are needed to support that conclusion.” Vaporizers anyone?

4) The four day work week After COVID sent workers home to be safe, ABC News reports that more than 100 companies in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States decided to run a trial of a four-day-work week. Perhaps to their surprise, it turned out that an extra day off a week actually increased productivity, boosted physical and mental health, and, given lots less home to office and back travel, also reduced CO2 emissions. At the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos last January, the new schedule was called “a business imperative.” Workers agree: 97 percent of those in the experiment said a four-day week should become permanent.

5) Burst Bubbles As another New Year’s Eve draws near, it may be time to think ginger ale rather than champagne. For more than 30 years both the American Cancer Society and Harvard’s long running Nurses’ Health Study said moderate drinking was not only fun but heart healthy as well. Swiss counterparts said it slowed the progress of arthritis, and Netherlanders at Wageningen University tossed in a lower risk of Type 2 diabetes. But last March, just as Spring was about to bloom, the Journal of the American Medical Association rained on the parade. An analysis of multiple studies tracking health and drinking habits of nearly 5 million people found that even 1 ounce a day for women and 1.5 ounces for men increased the risk of death from virtually everything ranging from heart disease, cancer, and infections to DUI auto accidents. “The bottom-line message is that in terms of health, less alcohol is better,” says one study author Tim Naimi, director of the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research. His shorter version: “Drink less, live more.”

Happy New Year!