What health research is going on right now?

The field of health research grows and adapts. Bringing research into practice through new technologies and therapies is a long and costly process. The National Institutes of Health (part of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services) is one of the largest funders of research to find new approaches, such as drug treatments, to improve health outcomes. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decides whether new drugs are safe and effective using the results of research studies. Here are some current research studies:

• An artificial pancreas for youth diabetes
  Tools that monitor a patient's blood sugar and automatically inject the right amount of insulin are being explored. This will decrease problems due to disease, and will improve quality of life.
• Stem cells for Parkinson's disease
  Stem cell research seeks to restore brain function for patients with Parkinson's disease. Before this research can produce treatments, standards must be developed to ensure that the treatments are safe and reliable.
• Personalized treatments for cancer
  Research studies search for unique characteristics of people that might respond best to a type of cancer treatment or combination of treatments. This has come to be known as "personalized medicine."
• Safer pain medications
  Prescription pain drug abuse and misuse are common. Patients in pain are often undertreated. New pain pathways have been found and new medicines are being made to treat pain better.
• Vaccines and new drugs for tuberculosis (TB)
  Research into treatments to stop drug resistant TB and to develop TB vaccines is ongoing. Approaches are needed that can quickly assess TB treatments and vaccines, such as finding specific characteristics that can lead to cures and prevention.