15 of the Biggest Health Topics of 2019

This year was the worst year for measles — a disease that was declared eradicated in the United States in 2000. So far in 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has identified 1,261 individual cases of measles — a vaccine preventable disease — in 31 states, the highest number since 1992.

In January 2019, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee declared a public health emergency after health officials identified an outbreak of measles. Most of the infected individuals were under the age of 10, and none had received the standard MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccination which is administered twice when a child is between 12 and 15 months old.

Most U.S. states require childhood vaccinations before children can enter the public school system, but they also allow exemptions for parents based on religious or philosophical beliefs. New York state — where more than 75% of this year’s measles cases (most of them in orthodox Jewish communities) are linked to — became the fifth state along with California, Maine, West Virginia, and Mississippi to eliminate belief-based exemptions.

Currently, there is no treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. 2019 started off with hope that soon there could be one. Biogen, a biotechnology company, presented promising results of a long-term study of its drug Aducanumab late in 2018. However, an independent review in March 2019 concluded there was not sufficient evidence to suggest the drug had any significant effects in treating the symptoms of the neurodegenerative disorder, and the company halted all production of the drug.

Still, Biogen has since reevaluated the data and announced in October it would ask the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve the drug as first treatment for early Alzheimer’s disease. The company said that patients in the early stages of the disease who were treated with a high dose of the drug experienced significant improvements in memory, orientation, and language.

To drink or not to drink? This question has been asked for decades and the answers have varied. While science has so far been definitive that drinking alcohol excessively is unhealthy, this is not the case when it comes to light and moderate drinking, which is defined as up to two alcoholic drinks for men and one for women in one day. The debate is still ongoing, but in 2019, the not-so-healthy side seems to be winning. A recent study observing 160,000 adults in China found that moderate drinking slightly raised the risk of stroke and hypertension.

Another recent study, this one examining more than 17,000 American adults, also found that moderate drinking — consuming seven to 13 drinks a week — raises the risk of high blood pressure.

It seems like “we sell CBD products” signs are everywhere in stores these days. Cannabidiol, or CBD — an active but not psychoactive compound found in marijuana — has been in the news a lot in 2019. Its potential health benefits — ranging from treating epilepsy symptoms to relieving anxiety — have made CBD products very popular. About one in seven U.S. adults say they use them, according to a Gallup poll. About 40% take them to relieve pain. The next most common use is to treat anxiety.

The federal government legalized CBD products with extremely low concentrations of the psychoactive compound THC last December. These products are no longer considered “controlled substances” under federal law. But the FDA is still conducting research into CBD products’ effects, and some states still restrict them. Health authorities also point out that CBDs are sold as a dietary supplement, not a medication, which means that the FDA does not regulate them for purity or safety.

An estimated 1.2 million or about 2.2% of children in the United States have a potentially life-threatening allergy to peanuts. (According to the National Institutes of Health, little is known about peanut allergies in adults.) In people with peanut allergy, their immune system misidentifies peanut proteins as something harmful and releases symptom-causing chemicals into the blood. Symptoms can range from mild to life-threatening.

A recent study by Stanford University offers hope the condition can be treated in as little as two weeks by injecting a person suffering from the allergy with an antibody. Oral immunotherapy, in which patients gradually increase the amount of the food they are allergic to in order to desensitize their immune system, takes between six months and a year and can still cause a severe allergic reaction.

Other research suggests placing a small quantity of liquified peanut protein under the patient’s tongue can protect the person from severe allergic reactions. This technique is called sublingual immunotherapy and it poses fewer risks and side effects than immunotherapy because it avoids the digestive tract.

Demand for plant-based meat substitutes has grown considerably in recent years. Growing veganism for both health and animal rights reasons, as well as concerns over the consequences of factory farming on the climate, are among the drivers of this trend.

Most Americans have likely heard of Beyond Meat burgers, which contain no meat. They are plant-based patties that include water, pea proteins, oils, rice protein, and flavors. Another meatless product, the Impossible Burger, has been a huge hit, according to Burger King, which serves it. Overall, about 95% of people who order the meatless burgers are not vegans, according to 2017 data from market researcher NPD Group.

Plant-based burgers are also becoming available in supermarkets, and Blue Apron has recently introduced Beyond Meat into its home meal kits. The global plant-based meat market is growing — it was valued at $10 billion in 2018 and is expected to reach $31 billion by 2026, according to Reports and Data, a market intelligence and strategic consulting firm.

3D printing technology has improved considerably over the past few years. (Today, even low-budget 3D printers are available for anyone who can spare $100.) The technology has advanced so much that producing fully functional replacement organs from a person’s own cells seems like a not so distant possibility. Scientists at Harvard ‘s Wyss Institute have grown a heart tissue that beats just like a normal human heart.

Production for treatment is still years away, however. The technique, called sacrificial writing into functional tissue (SWIFT), has not even been tested on mice yet. But if it works, it can be used to print other organs, too, potentially saving the lives of thousands of people who are on an organ donor list.

Air pollution is largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels like coal and petroleum, and although for a while it seemed like air pollution was improving in the United States, since 2016 it has worsened again. Researchers from the University of Chicago call air pollution the “world’s top killer” because it cuts global life expectancy by an average of 1.8 years per person, according to the university’s Quality Life Index.

Pollution in the form of particulate matter, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and sulphur dioxide can make it into people’s lungs and bloodstream, worsening heart and lung diseases and even triggering a heart attack and stroke. In the United States alone, nearly 10,000 premature deaths since 2016 have been attributed to an increase in air pollution, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

More than 141 million Americans live in places with unhealthy levels of air pollution, according to the American Lung Association’s 2019 State of the Air report. This is significantly more than the 134 million people reported in 2018.

More than 37 million Americans use marijuana for either recreational or medical reasons, according to the CDC. The psychoactive drug is still illegal on a federal level but more states are loosening regulations.

Pain management is among the most common reasons for the drug’s use, but the CDC warns more studies are needed to determine if it’s actually better than other pain treatments. Also, the CDC warns, marijuana makes the heart beat faster, possibly raising the risk for stroke and heart disease.

Michigan just became the latest state to legalize the purchase of recreational marijuana. Anyone who is 21 or older can buy and possess weed. Illinois legalized marijuana in June, but recreational possession and sales will not start until the new year. Even though marijuana is still illegal at the federal level, 33 states and D.C. have legalized it either just for medical use or for recreational use as well.

Even though deaths from breast cancer have declined, the disease remains the second leading cause of cancer death among women in the United States, according to the CDC. More than 40,000 women die from it a year.

Improved rates of early detection has helped drive up survival rates. A recent British study offers hope that the condition could now be detected five years before there are any clinical signs of it. The new method is a blood test that identifies the body’s immune response to antigens produced by tumor cells. The test may be available in clinics in about five years.

The growing number of parents opting to not vaccinate their kids has grown into an anti-vaccination movement. It was major news in 2019, after various measles outbreaks were attributed to the growing trend. Thankfully, vaccination coverage remains relatively high – above 90% for serious conditions such as polio, hepatitis B, varicella, measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR).

Still, the anti-vaccination movement, which has been decades in the making, has had some impact — for third school year in a row, the share of kindergartners with an exemption, which can be either religious or based on personal beliefs, from at least one vaccine has increased slightly. An analysis by the National Institutes of Health found that celebrities such as Jenny McCarthy and Robert De Niro as well as politicians such as President Donald Trump have contributed to the rise of anti-vaxxers by claiming a false link between vaccinations and autism. (Trump has changed his tone and now urges vaccinations.)

A less talked about reason for missed vaccination deadlines is socioeconomic status. Poverty and health care access have been pointed out by some doctors as the reason for large coverage gaps between children living below the poverty line compared to kids in better-off families.

2019 has been an exciting year in the field of health technology and scientific research. In addition to the prospect of potentially saving thousands of lives by printing crucial human organs such as the heart, millions of people suffering from joint inflammation such as osteoarthritis, the most common form of arthritis, may be helped.

A recent study published in the Science Advances journal has found that “cartilage in human joints can repair itself […] to regenerate limbs.” (The body was believed to be unable to do so.) People have a molecule that helps with joint tissue repair, and that molecule is more active in ankles and less active in knees and hips. The findings can help develop treatments that may prevent, slow, or even reverse arthritis.

Health experts have been warning about antibiotic resistance for decades now. Antibiotic resistance occurs when drugs can no longer kill certain bacteria. It usually happens as a result of changes in the bacteria due to overuse of antibiotics. (Penicillin, a key to the decline of infections over the last few decades, is becoming obsolete, according to some research.) In April 2019, the United Nations (UN) issued an urgent warning on the overuse of antibiotics and antimicrobial drugs in people, animals, and plants. According to the UN, overuse is the reason for a growing number of pathogens becoming drug-resistant. Antibiotic resistance may result in 10 million deaths a year by 2050.

Currently, about 700,000 people worldwide die a year from drug-resistant diseases, according to the UN. In the United States alone, 35,000 people die from such conditions, and more than 2.8 million cases of antibiotic-resistant infections are reported annually, according to the CDC.

The World Health Organizations warns that a growing number of infections, including pneumonia, tuberculosis, gonorrhoea, and salmonellosis, are becoming antibiotic-resistant and thus harder to treat.

Prostate cancer is the most common type of cancer in men and the second biggest killer of men (after lung cancer) in the United States, with about 88 men dying from it every day, according to the Prostate Cancer Foundation. Survival rates are higher when the cancer is detected in the early stages before it has not spread to other parts of the body.

A new hormone therapy called enzalutamide (Xtandi) may improve survival rates among patients with metastatic prostate cancer as well. Enzalutamide works by blocking testosterone from reaching prostate cancer cells, potentially slowing the growth of cancer cells or causing them to shrink. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine examined 1,125 patients with metastatic prostate cancer for nearly three years. The group undergoing treatment with enzalutamide had a significantly higher overall survival rate than group undergoing standard care.

The United States, the biggest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, announced in 2017 that it would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It seems that ever since, climate change awareness has been increasing. After several huge heat-fueled wildfires over the last two years and deadly hurricanes, polls now show that increasingly more Americans worry about global warming. Global warming, which climate scientists say is largely caused by humans, affects more than just the weather.

In August 2019, a UN report warned that climate change could trigger an unprecedented global food crisis. Heavier rainfalls and longer heat waves as a result of global warming can disrupt crops, resulting in loss of food. Increasing temperatures make soil less fertile, jeopardizing food security as well. Today, already more than 820 million people worldwide are undernourished, and more than 500 million live in areas where soil is being lost fast due to floods, droughts, and storms.