Key Health And Healthcare Breakthroughs Of 2016

Bugs Are The Future!

When Chinese and English researchers teamed up to analyze the nutritional contents of various bugs in comparison to beef sirloin, they found that cricket, mealworm, buffalo worm and grasshopper all featured higher concentrations of essential nutrients such as zinc, calcium, copper and magnesium, as well as offering a more easily absorbed form of iron. Bugs, which are already enjoyed as part of the regular diet in many parts of the world, including South-East Asia, were confirmed to being more nutritious than the meats we typically eat as well as being low-fat and high in proteins. With novel restaurants offering bugs on the menu springing up all over the Western world, we can truly say that eating bugs is the future. Eating bugs doesn't only benefit the environment (while 10 kilos of food will give us only a kilo of beef, only 50 percent of which will be consumed, the same amount of feed will gives us nine kilos of bug meat, 95 percent of which can end up on your dinner table), it's hip and healthy as well!

New Breast Cancer Genes Discovered

A large and revolutionary study of breast cancer genomes, published in the journals Nature and Nature Communications, and analyzing a total of 560 breast cancer genomes, identified five new breast cancer genes and 13 mutational signatures. Not only did the analysis offer new insights into underlying reasons for the occurrence of breast cancer, it may also pave the way towards individualized medicine in the future. 

Researcher Dr Serena Nik-Zainal said: "We'd like to be able to profile individual cancer genomes so that we can identify the treatment most likely to be successful for a woman or man diagnosed with breast cancer."

Zika Breakthrough Found In Existing Medicines

2016 was the year that put the Zika virus on the global map, as the World Health Organization declared a a global public health emergency after increasing numbers of babies were born with microcephaly, widely speculated to be caused by a virus most people were previously completely unaware of existing. 

READ Could The Zika Virus Be Responsible For A Serious Autoimmune Brain Disorder In Adults Too?

However, when researchers from Florida State University, Johns Hopkins University and the National Institutes of Health teamed up in the search for possible treatments among FDA-approved drugs or those already going through clinical trials, they were successful. They identified two pre-existing medications, one of which is the tapeworm drug Nicolsamide, that can together work to prevent the Zika viruses from replicating and damaging fetal brain cells in pregnant women. 

Onwards!

What's in store for us in 2017? Plenty, as it turns out! A mini pacemaker requiring no wires and offering a much less invasive surgical procedure should be FDA-approved sometime during the first half of 2017. A drug inhibiting LDL (or "bad") cholesterol is also expected to be approved, while a device allowing people with macular degeneration to see again will become available across the United States. Here at SteadyHealth, we are excited to be bringing you news of all the other major health breakthroughs that 2017 will no doubt see!