medicine

I’m writing a screenplay for the next big Hollywood blockbuster. The main character is a Harvard-educated doctor who conducts research on a remote South Pacific Island in the 1960s. The doctor realizes that the native people on this island are suffering from a devastating epidemic. He notes the symptoms of this mysterious disease: first, the infected victims begin to tremble; they lose the ability to walk and begin to laugh a terrible, demonic laugh; dementia and death soon follow.

Along with flying cars and underwater bubble cities, pills curing every ill are a staple of science fiction. But while aero-autobahns and submerged metropolises have not moved any closer to reality, medical science has advanced to the point where pills once considering miraculous may soon be a reality. Popular Science has a rundown of the top future pills that may one day change your life. Launch it here.

In the eighties, scientists issued a strange warning: don’t drink grapefruit juice if you’re taking the high-blood-pressure drug felodipine. The study, led by University of Western Ontario’s David Bailey, found that the body’s levels of felodipine mushroomed after people drank the bittersweet nectar. They later identified 50 more medications that exhibited the “grapefruit juice effect,” stamped warning labels on them, and called it a day.

Think smoking is bad for you? Try just breathing. Louisiana scientists have discovered a group of previously undetected air pollutants that when inhaled exposes the average person to 300 times more free radicals than that of one cigarette in a day.

Ninety years ago the Spanish flu swept across the globe, killing between 50 and 100 million people in only a few months. Since then, the specter of another flu pandemic dealing death and woe around the world has periodically terrified the medical and popular communities. But scientists searching for ways to prevent a similar outbreak in the form of the H5N1 bird flu have found a cure for the deadliest flu in the most unlikely place: nonagenarian immune systems.

A recent study by Stanford researchers has confirmed your worst fears—that dorky neighbor in the short-shorts who zips by every morning at 6 o’clock in the morning will likely outlive you, and will be healthier in the long run.

Plenty of medications help people deal with fear, but the most effective one may be a humble antibiotic. Scientists testing a new treatment for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) say the key to faster recovery might be a 50-year-old tuberculosis drug called
D-cycloserine, or DCS.

Talk of the promise of stem cells usually revolves around creating new, healthy cells to repair damaged or diseased organs. However, a joint project between Harvard and Columbia Universities has been doing the exact opposite: creating stem cells that will develop into diseased cells. By creating stem cells from people with a known degenerative disorder, the researchers hope to explore the process that cause the diseases, discover where a cure might be most effective, and probe the unexplored area between genetics and disease.

If you’re a sports fan, you can probably list the top pitchers, the top quarterbacks . . . and the top orthopedic surgeons. A franchise’s success—and an athlete’s next contract—hinges on how quickly injured superstars return to the field. Here’s how doctors are turning what would have been career-ending injuries a decade ago into speed bumps on the way to Canton or Cooperstown

Though it may seem like merely a yearly inconvenience to most, the flu in fact kills around 36,000 Americans annually and costs the country between $71 and $167 billion dollars; the equivalent of 10 September 11ths in deaths and a Hurricane Katrina in damages every year. Most attempts to prevent the flu focus on vaccination, but a new study suggests drugs could actually prevent the deadliest symptoms of the disease.

For the 1.3 million people who suffer renal failure each year, kidney dialysis is a major undertaking. The lengthy out-patient process requires near-daily trips to the doctor’s office to be hooked up for hours to a massive machine; making it difficult to hold a job or have a normal social life. But Victor Gura of UCLA’s Geffen School of medicine has patented and tested the holy grail of nephrology: a portable, wearable dialysis machine.

Catching cancer before it metastasizes, or spreads throughout the body, is one way to increase your chances of survival. Now scientists may have found a way to help even when cancer is already on the move, by using magnets to lasso cancer cells and drag them out of the body. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have shown that magnetic nanoparticles—tiny shards of magnetic metal, less than a hundred thousandths of an inch in diameter—can be attached to cancer cells, which can then be manipulated and moved with another magnet.

If you’re often paralyzed with worry and can’t utter a word in social situations, stop faulting your mother – your lack of intercalated (ITC) neurons is to blame. Neuroscientists from Rutgers University in New York shed a light on anxiety last week, when they published a paper that pinpoints which brain cells are responsible for fear.

The effects of smoking have been well documented. Heart disease and emphysema, lung cancer and yellow teeth; the list seems to go on forever. Well, add one more to that list: enhanced memory. A new study conducted at King’s College in London indicates that the addictive and highly toxic chemical nicotine might improve memory and stave off the onset of dementia.