In 2025, the health sector achieved qualitative leaps in various fields, making it a year full of innovations and inventions that instilled hope in patients. With expectations of these discoveries continuing in 2026, hope is renewed in overcoming the health challenges facing the world.
However, some health problems will move from 2025 to the new year, most notably those related to climate change and its impact on health, in addition to the problem of antibiotic resistance, which is worsening year after year. These problems require diligent follow-up by scientists and health and medical authorities, in an effort to find radical solutions to them.
Here are the most prominent health events witnessed in 2025:
1- “Experiment of Joy” for the first time:
It seems that a man who suffered from severe depression for more than three decades has entered a phase of calm, thanks to a specially designed brain pacemaker that selectively activates specific areas of his brain.
Damian Fair of the University of Minnesota says: “He felt joy for the first time in years.”
Treatment resistance is common in cases of depression, and is usually defined as not noticing any significant improvement after trying at least two types of antidepressants.
2- Pig lung transplant:
A genetically modified pig lung maintained its vitality and function for 9 days after being transplanted into a human recipient declared brain dead.
Doctors also announced that a 67-year-old man from New Hampshire had achieved a significant medical milestone after living for more than 9 months with a genetically modified pig kidney. The experimental transplant, performed by surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital Brigham, lasted 271 days, the longest survival time for any person with an animal organ.
3- Alzheimer’s treatment:
The European Medicines Agency paved the way for the use of a drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease.
After review, the agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use recommended granting marketing authorization in the European Union for the antibody “donanemab” for the treatment of early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.
4- Trump and Paracetamol:
US President Donald Trump advised pregnant women not to take the widely used drug paracetamol, claiming “it may be linked to a sharp increase in the risk of autism.”
But this statement sparked controversy and widespread opposition from health ministries, which denied the relationship between them.
5- A drug that revives hope in treating one of the most dangerous types of cancer:
The new experimental drug offers hope in treating pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancers, after early clinical trials showed tumor shrinkage in some patients.
The drug, called daraxonasrap and developed by Revolution Medicines, has been granted a fast-track review by the US Food and Drug Administration to speed up its availability to patients, a move that has sparked widespread debate about the speed of approvals without compromising safety standards.
6- Climate change and health:
The effects of climate warming, from extreme heat waves, drought and air pollution, are constantly worsening in the world, causing millions of deaths, according to the medical journal The Lancet in its annual report.
The report pointed to a number of consequences of warming that have repercussions on health, most notably:
* Heat waves that particularly affect the elderly and infants.
* Drought that threatens the food security of millions of people.
* Air pollution and forest fires.
7- Blood type conversion:
Researchers in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering said they converted a kidney from blood type (A) to blood type (O) and successfully transplanted it, a breakthrough that could reduce waiting times for new organs and save lives.
8- Gene editing and CRISPR therapies:
Gene editing technology, such as CRISPR technology, can revolutionize gene therapies by correcting genetic diseases from their roots by repairing gene mutations.
However, this technology raises important ethical questions, including the possibility of unintended genetic changes, the ethics of gene editing in germ cells, the possibility of its use for non-therapeutic purposes, and ensuring equal access to health care for all patients.
9- Antimicrobial resistance kills 10 million people annually by 2050:
“Superbugs,” which have become resistant to drugs previously used to treat them, kill an estimated 5 million people annually.
This situation is expected to worsen, as antimicrobial resistance could lead to 10 million deaths annually by 2050 if urgent action is not taken. Dame Sally Davies, the UK government’s special envoy for antimicrobial resistance, says we risk going back to the pre-penicillin era, when common infections threatened life, undermining decades of medical progress.
10- Weight loss pills:
Amid the continued growth of popular weight loss injections, Eli Lilly revealed that its new once-daily pill, Orforglipron, helped patients lose significant weight and lower blood sugar in a late-stage clinical trial.
A draft guideline from the World Health Organization also showed that it would recommend the use of weight loss drugs to treat obesity in adults and urge countries to take obesity seriously as a chronic disease.
11- “Revolutionary implant”… a medical innovation that restores sight to the blind:
A group of blind patients were able to regain the ability to read after a revolutionary implant was installed in the back of the eye, in a clinical trial conducted at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.
12- The danger of ultra-processed foods:
Researchers confirmed that the increasing global consumption of ultra-processed foods poses a significant threat to health, calling on countries to impose marketing restrictions and taxes on some products manufactured by major food companies.
A study revealed that 104 studies link ultra-processed foods to obesity, diabetes, heart disease and premature death.
13- First dengue fever vaccine:
Brazilian authorities approved the world’s first single-dose vaccine against dengue fever, which they hailed as a “historic” achievement as cases of the mosquito-borne disease rise globally due to rising temperatures.
