Medical Breakthroughs: Keep Your Brain Healthy

Pioneering drugs that remedy once-intractable diseases; clever products that make everyday living easier for people with injury or illness; innovative technologies that provide relief at a touch of a button — by all measures, 2017 has been a year of astounding health care advancements. Here are some of the ways medical trailblazers and researchers are creating fresh possibilities for you and your family.

A Fresh Approach To Fighting MS 

The first sign of trouble came when Jim Swartwood, now 56, couldn’t read the license plate on his pickup truck from 20 feet away. Swartwood, of Big Lake, Minn., saw an eye doctor, then a neurologist. Tests revealed he had 19 lesions on his brain, a sign of multiple sclerosis. More symptoms of this debilitating nerve condition soon came, and the MS drugs he tried didn’t do much. In 2013, Swartwood’s doctor got him into a clinical trial for a medication called Ocrevus. His symptoms subsided. The dreaded relapses didn’t come. 

Most treatments for MS focus on T cells, a kind of white blood cell. But in 2001, Stephen Hauser, chair of the neurology department at the University of California, San Francisco, teamed up with Genentech to test Ocrevus, which targets a different kind of white blood cell called B cells. Last March the drug was approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It’s not a miracle cure, but it slows the disease’s progression and reduces relapses.  

Swartwood now lifts weights and plays racquetball. “Who knows what will happen tomorrow?” he says. “But I know I will be blessed no matter what.” —David Ferry

Jim Swartwood participated in a clinical trial for his multiple sclerosis and can now live an active lifestyle.

BRIAN DOBEN

A Scan For Memory Loss? 

The brains of people with signs of early dementia have smaller-than-normal medial temporal lobes, according to MRI scans done by Canadian researchers. Scans can’t currently predict Alzheimer’s disease, but in the future they might allow for preventive treatment. —Virginia Sole-Smith

Detecting Early Memory Decline 

With just an internet connection and a webcam, consumers can take an eye-tracking test that can detect and monitor memory decline before noticeable symptoms take hold. It’s all based on subtle eye movements. An Emory University study from eight years ago found that people with memory impairment will spend equal time looking at new images and pictures they had seen before, contrasted with the average person, who will spend more time looking at the new than the familiar. Neurotrack has developed an inexpensive version of this test that takes just five minutes using a webcam and an internet browser. —Denny Watkins