A-Z Guide to the Year in Medicine

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SLEEP Failing to get a good night's sleep can be hazardous to your health, even if you are not a teamster or an airline pilot. For one thing, sleep deprivation goes hand in hand with obesity. In a study of just over 1,000 patients, subjects with normal body mass indexes got 1.86 more hours of sleep a week than those who were overweight. Sleep disorders such as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) pose even graver risks. Not only does OSA cause raucous snoring, but it can also stop your breathing as often as 60 times an hour, which may strain your cardiovascular system. Studies show that moderate to severe OSA significantly raises your risk of stroke and sudden death from cardiac causes. The condition can be effectively treated, however, with masks that force air through your nose while you sleep.

DIANE BONDAREFF / AP

SMOKING It's no secret that smoking is bad for you, but secondhand smoke is proving more dangerous than anyone suspected. Two studies showed that women who don't smoke but live or work with people who do have a 27% increased risk of breast cancer and are as much as twice as likely to develop cervical tumors. Another study showed that children raised by smokers have as much as three times greater risk of developing lung cancer when they grow up. A fourth study found that the grandchildren of women who smoked while pregnant are more than twice as likely to develop asthma as children whose grandmothers did not. And environmental smoke, even at low levels, was associated with lower reading, math and logic skills in children and teenagers.

The good news is that eliminating secondhand smoke really makes a difference. In 2003, Pueblo, Colo., banned smoking in restaurants, offices and other indoor spaces. In the 18 months following the ban, the number of heart attacks among Pueblo residents fell 27%.

STATINS The more than 10 million Americans who take statin drugs to lower cholesterol may be enjoying some unexpected benefits. New studies suggested that regularly taking medicines like Lipitor, Lescol, Pravachol and Zocor may halve a patient's risk of developing colon and advanced prostate cancers while reducing their risk of pancreatic and esophageal cancers more than 50%. Another study showed that patients who aren't on statins can cut their risk of death following a heart attack more than 50% if they take them before hospitalization and within 24 hours after the attack. Doctors think the cholesterol- and inflammation-reducing effects of the drugs may even help Alzheimer's patients; in a three-year study published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, statins appeared to slow the progress of the disease.

STEM CELLS Before admitting to ethical lapses last week, the same Korean researcher who created Snuppy the cloned puppy (see "Cloning") shocked Western scientists by producing 11 custom-made human-stem-cell lines from the cloned skin cells of individual patients. The labs' procedure was surprisingly efficient; Woo Suk Hwang and his team needed on average only 17 human eggs to grow each of the cell lines (in contrast to the 242 eggs they needed to make a single stem-cell line just 15 months earlier). Research like this may someday lead to treatments for a wide range of disorders, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases and spinal-cord injuries.

Meanwhile, U.S. scientists made progress in the field without having to sacrifice human eggs or embryonic tissue. At Duke University, doctors used umbilical-cord blood to save babies born with Krabbe disease, a rare and usually fatal genetic disorder. The illness, which prevents brain development and causes rapid deterioration and death, was immediately halted by transplanting another baby's cord blood--and the stem cells it contained-- into infants with the Krabbe defect.