When pondering what were the biggest medical stories out of Stanford Medicine this year, we turned to some very reliable sources: our office's team of talented science writers, who regularly talk with and write about the work of the school's researchers. What did these wordsmiths pick as some of the most important developments? In no particular order:
- a study showing that the DNA of peanut-allergic kids changes with immune therapy
- researchers' tracking of a mysterious polio-like illness in kids
- the development of a blood test that could provide rapid, accurate method of detecting solid cancers
- a study showing that an infusion of young blood recharges the brains of old mice
- the invention of a nanotech microchip to diagnose type-1 diabetes
- an analysis showing that a gene variant puts women more at risk of Alzheimer's disease than men
- the development of a noninvasive way to detect heart-transplant rejection weeks or months earlier than previously possible
- a study showing that breast cancer patients with bilateral mastectomy don’t have better survival rates
- the discovery of brain abnormalities in patients with ME/chronic fatigue syndrome
- the development of a technique for measuring insulin levels in fruit flies, giving researchers a powerful new way to study diabetes
Photo, of radiation oncologist Maximilian Diehn, MD, PhD (who shared senior authorship of a paper describing how a blood sample could one day be enough to diagnose many types of solid cancers), by Norbert von der Groeben
