Thread by @cremieuxrecueil

The medical community has cured a mountain of diseases in the past several decades.

Diseases cured thread🧵

In 2013, hepatitis C was cured by direct-acting antivirals.

Peptic ulcers are now curable in more than 90% of patients via antibiotic triple/quad therapy (1994).

Sickle cell anemia was cured in 2023 for >96% of patients.

Ph+ leukemia was once a death sentence, but due to progressive improvements in treatment, most people are able to survive it now.

Hemgenix and Roctavian are cures for large numbers of the patients who have hemophilia B and hemophilia A.

Multidrug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) tuberculosis were very recently cured for the vast majority of patients (~90%).

Hereditary ATTR amyloidosis can now be halted with patisiran/inotersen, tafamidis, and vutrisiran.

It used to be fatal within ~ten years of onset.

Advanced Hodgkin Lymphoma used to have an extreme fatality rate, but thanks to brentuximab vedotin and nivolumab, ~90% now survive.

Hereditary angioedema used to cause unpredictable laryngeal attacks that were often fatal, but after lanadelumab and berotralstat, we now have a near-perfect prophylactic.

Paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria is so serious that ~35% of those who have it die within five years.

Eculizumab makes it so people with the condition can survive just as well as other members of the general population.

HER2+ breast cancer used to be the worst subtype, but thanks to trastuzumab (+ pertuzumab, T-DM1, T-DXd), it now has a ~95% survival rate if detected early (and we're increasingly detecting it early).

Chronic myeloid leukemia used to kill ~70-80% of people with it within five years, but thanks to 2nd/3rd-gen TKIs, 82% of people now survive 10 years with it.

Most people are functionally cured!

Hereditary tyrosinemia type 1 was almost uniformly fatal in childhood, but nitisinone has made it possible for totally normal survival for almost everyone with the condition who has it detected in youth.

Gaucher disease type 1 used to shorten and worsen lifespans dramatically, but enzyme replacement therapies have made it possible for people with it to live practically normally.

Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma used to kill most with it, but rituximab + CHOP made it so ~65% of people with it could be cured.

A repeated theme in cures is that they work for most people. There are, for example, several people who've been cured of HIV via bone marrow transplants.

But this doesn't apply to the majority, because the disease is complex. Complexity will always be true for all diseases.

Many of the cures we receive are functional ones.

We don't figure out how to completely get rid of a disease like we have for, e.g., hairy cell leukemia (1993) or acute promyelocytic leukemia (1995), but instead, we learn how to control disease, like we did with HIV/AIDS:

Similar successes have been reached with conditions like cystic fibrosis, where people can now take a drug and live normal lives.

Other treatments like those for SMA type 1 make it so the overwhelming majority survive, although only a majority—not overwhelming—do so healthfully.

I can keep listing diseases that have been cured for most, from metastatic GIST to infantile Pompe disease to relapsed/refractory pediatric B-ALL to homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia to... the list goes on.

But I doubt this person really cares.

Medicine actually delivers cures all the time, and it's increasingly delivering them today.

The number of gene therapies that we know work, and which are in the pipeline has exploded. We're entering the era of abundant cures!

And we're *in* an era where plenty has been cured!

And who could forget?

With drugs like semaglutide (pictured, from the SELECT trial), tirzepatide (even more effective), and retatrutide (even MORE effective!), almost everyone can now lose weight, and large amounts of it!