The Washington, DC area has seen amazing scientific advances this year.
A breakthrough in the treatment of life-altering problems. Maryland’s dinosaur discovery of the century and a teenager’s cancer-fighting invention are some of this year’s most read and favorite science and health stories.
Here are some of NBC Washington’s Health & Science articles about innovations that are changing lives for the better.
The drugs Ozempic and Wigoby have been in the news for helping people lose weight, and researchers are now investigating their potential impact on alcoholism and other addictive behaviors. I’m researching. News4’s Leon Harris reports.
“Enough is enough”: What weight loss drugs can tell us about addiction
The drugs Ozempic and Wigoby have been in the news for helping people lose weight, and researchers are now investigating their potential impact on alcoholism and other addictive behaviors. I’m researching.
“We see a decrease in impulsive behavior in patients,” says endocrinologist Dr. Rocio Salas Whalen. “Initially it was for food, but it is now being used for other types of urges, such as alcohol and tobacco.”
The drug works by suppressing a person’s appetite, essentially rewiring the brain’s reward system to match other desires such as food and alcohol, Salas-Whalen explained.
Lisa Robillard, a mother from Alexandria, Virginia, took the weight-loss drug for the first time as part of a clinical trial. She suffers from chronic obesity and has been suffering from this obesity since her childhood. While taking her medication, she noticed that her weight had dropped by 60 pounds, she started leaving her food on her plate, and her drinking habits had also changed.
“I have no such desire. I’ll have a glass of wine, where I might have had two or three, one glass. 1703875275 Fine or half a glass is fine. Something in my head says, “That’s a good thing.” “I’ve had enough,” she said.
Scientists at the UNC School of Medicine are looking deeper into humans as part of ongoing clinical trials to study this class of drugs and their potential effectiveness as a treatment for alcohol dependence.
The bones of a predator that predates Tyrannosaurus rex by 50 million years have been discovered at an active excavation site on Mid-Atlantic Boulevard. News4’s Derrick Ward takes us inside the discoveries that have paleontologists excited.
‘Most important excavation site east of the Mississippi River’: Dinosaur fossils revealed in ancient river ‘bone bed’ in Maryland
Paleontologists have discovered a gold mine of fossil records on undeveloped land in the middle of a highly industrialized area of Prince George’s County, less than an hour from Washington, D.C.
Paleontologists at Dinosaur Park, a public park and current excavation site in Laurel, Maryland, announced in July that the park contains what paleontologists call a bone bed. This is the term used when one or more species are concentrated close to each other within the same geological formation of the earth.
“This is certainly the most important collection of dinosaur bones discovered along the East Coast in the last 100 years,” said Matthew Carano, a paleontologist at the Smithsonian Institution.
One of the most exciting discoveries was discovered on Earth Day. It was the foot bone of a large, three-foot-long carnivorous dinosaur. It belongs to theropoda, a subfamily of the dinosaur family that includes carnivores such as tyrannosaurs. However, this dinosaur lived about 50 million years earlier.
JP Hodnett, a paleontologist with Prince George’s County Parks and Recreation, believes it belongs to an acrocanthosaurus, a 12,000-pound apex predator that made the laurel its home about 115 million years ago. ing.
“Finding a bone bed like this is a dream for many paleontologists,” Hodnett said in the release.
Dinosaur Park and its many fossils are waiting to be discovered. If you want to try your hand at fossil hunting, you can attend free public programs held on the first and third Saturday of each month.
Fairfax County ninth-grader Heman Bekele has been named America’s Top Young Scientist for developing a soap designed to treat low-grade skin cancer. News4’s Amy Cho reports.
14-year-old from Virginia named top young scientist for inventing cancer-fighting soap
Heman Bekele, a freshman at Woodson High School in Northern Virginia, spent his summer receiving treatment for cancer.
He was named “America’s Top Young Scientist” for developing a bar of soap designed to fight low-grade skin cancer. He won the top prize of $25,000 out of nine students and was named America’s Top Young Scientist.
“I wanted to find a way to provide an equitable and accessible form of skin cancer treatment for the entire world,” Bekele said.
The 14-year-old boy calls it Skin Cancer Treatment Soap, or SCTS for short. This soap protects the skin and replenishes the skin with dendritic cells that help fight cancer.
Before making soap, he contacted a professor at the University of Virginia to help with his research.
He said he hopes to bring the soap to market within the next five years and form a nonprofit organization to make it available to people in need.
Doctors say the new technology could save lives and save time. Reported by News4’s reporter Eunyan.
Thanks to new medical technology, cancer diagnosis and treatment can be done in one day
Diagnosis and surgical treatment of lung cancer can take several weeks. But for some patients, INOVA Health System can perform both procedures on the same day thanks to new, cutting-edge robotic technology.
“This is a major change in the treatment of early-stage lung cancer,” said Dr. Michael Wyant, INOVA’s chief of thoracic surgery. “So from start to finish he does everything in one day.”
Wyant says this approach leads to better outcomes and reduces the emotional burden after a cancer diagnosis.
Cheryl Bitch’s biopsy and surgery took about eight hours and were successful, and she returned to her home in Northern Virginia the next day. In January, she said thanks to her innovative technology, she’s back to her daily routine of taking her new puppy for long walks and looking forward to more travel adventures.
“Despite the diagnosis, it was a really painless process,” she said. “If I had to go home and think about this for weeks, I don’t know if everything would have been better as a result.”
Patients should be eligible for same-day diagnosis and surgery if their lung nodules have been identified and have not spread elsewhere, doctors said.
Scientists are using artificial intelligence to help paralyzed patients move and communicate again. News4 reporter Sean Yancey reports.
‘It’s unrealistic’: AI helps paralyzed patients regain movement and communicate
Two cutting-edge clinical trials are using artificial intelligence to help paralyzed patients regain movement and voice.
Keith Thomas was unable to move his arms and hands for years after a diving accident left him paralyzed from the chest down.
Now, something as simple as shaking someone’s hand gives him so much hope.
“When I feel the touch, it doesn’t feel real because I haven’t felt it in three years,” Keith Thomas said.
Through a new procedure called dual nerve bypass, doctors at Northwell Health’s Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in New York implanted five tiny computer chips into Thomas’s brain that can literally read his mind.
“This is the first time that the brain has been directly linked to spinal cord stimulation and the body, restoring the sense of movement and touch where a user’s thoughts actually drive their treatment,” said Professor Chad Bouton, Vice President of Advanced Engineering. Ta. Director of the Neural Bypass and Brain Computer Interface Laboratory at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research.
AI can do more than just help patients regain movement.
In another study published in Nature, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco and the University of California, Berkeley used artificial intelligence to help a paralyzed mother regain her voice.
Edited by Sophia Burns
