2001: Your A To Z Guide To The Year In Medicine

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LUNG CANCER Researchers were pleased to find that a diet rich in fruits and veggies reduced the risk--at least in women--of the No. 1 cancer killer in the U.S. Apples, pears, cauliflower and grapefruit were particularly active against the incidence of lung cancer for reasons that are still unclear (although scientists suspect carotenoids may be powerful anticarcinogens). But the bottom line is that no quantity of cabbages and citrus fruit can outweigh the benefits of not smoking.

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MRI A new form of noninvasive, "black blood" magnetic-resonance-imaging technique allows doctors to detect problem spots in carotid arteries, the aorta and coronary arteries before patients develop symptoms of atherosclerosis or stroke. The high-resolution MRI blacks out blood flow, offering doctors a clear view of the blood vessels and allowing them to precisely measure the thickness of their walls. Though the black-blood technique still needs improvement, doctors hope the technology will eventually identify those at risk of heart attack long before they have one.

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NERVE TRANSPLANT In a surgical first, Houston doctors transplanted nerves from a living donor to her infant son. To repair torn nerves in eight-month-old Rodrigo Cervantes Corona's left shoulder and arm, doctors took 3 ft. of neural tissue from his mother's legs and tracked it from the right side of his body to his left hand. The transplanted nerves will act as a conduit to allow the baby's undamaged right-hand nerves to grow over to his left side. The mother will feel a bit of numbness on each side of her feet for the rest of her life.

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PARKINSON'S DISEASE In an important step forward for both Parkinson's research and the struggling field of gene therapy, scientists in Chicago used a gene that boosts dopamine production and strengthens brain cells to successfully treat monkeys showing symptoms of the neurodegenerative disorder. By injecting a virus containing the GDNF (glial-derived neurotrophic factor) gene directly into monkeys' brains, scientists stimulated cell growth in areas normally injured by Parkinson's and reduced symptoms of the disease, such as hand tremors. Although success in primates doesn't mean success in humans, researchers hope to start clinical trials in humans within five years.

POLIO Last spring a strain of wild polio virus was unexpectedly discovered in the sewage system of Strasbourg, France. It's likely that the virus, considered extinct in that country, had escaped from one of Strasbourg's many biomedical laboratories. Still, the appearance of wild polio in a certified polio-free region undermined World Health Organization plans to eliminate universal vaccination once it declares polio eradicated, which it had hoped to do by 2005. Widespread on five continents, including the Americas, Europe and Asia, through the late 1980s, polio has been contained mostly to parts of sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent.