Cancer. Cancer refers to the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells in the body. This can affect almost any organ or tissue including lungs, breast, colon, skin and ovaries. Due to the complexity of the disease and the variety of forms it can take, developing a cure has proven difficult.
The world's biggest killer is ischaemic heart disease, responsible for 16% of the world's total deaths. Since 2000, the largest increase in deaths has been for this disease, rising by more than 2 million to 8.9 million deaths in 2019.
Rabies. Rabies, one of the oldest known infectious diseases, is nearly 100% fatal and continues to cause tens of thousands of human deaths globally (1).
This is considered to be the rarest disease in the world. Ribose-5-Phosphate Isomerase (RPI), is a crucial enzyme in a metabolic process in the human body. This condition can cause muscle stiffness, seizures, and reduction of white matter in the brain.
Sepsis happens when an infection you already have triggers a chain reaction throughout your body. Infections that lead to sepsis most often start in the lung, urinary tract, skin, or gastrointestinal tract. Without timely treatment, sepsis can rapidly lead to tissue damage, organ failure, and death.
Huntington's disease is a rare, progressive brain disorder. It gradually kills nerve cells in the brain. This slowly deteriorates a person's physical and mental abilities. The disease is genetic, which means it is inherited from your parents.
Cholera, bubonic plague, smallpox, and influenza are some of the most brutal killers in human history. And outbreaks of these diseases across international borders, are properly defined as pandemic, especially smallpox, which throughout history, has killed between 300-500 million people in its 12,000 year existence.
The oldest contagious disease known to affect humans is tuberculosis, a respiratory disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The bacterium is thought to have existed in something similar to its modern form for more than 70,000 years, and has been infecting humans since early prehistory.
Smallpox: 200 years between vaccine and the disease eradication. The last recorded case of smallpox occurred in 1977 in Somalia. The disease was officially declared eradicated by the World Health Organization in 1980.
Meanwhile, gene therapies are anticipated to become commercially available that will be able to restore sight and hearing loss, and cure Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, paralysis, and other conditions and degenerative diseases. Other treatment options that will become commonplace by mid-century include stem cell therapy.
Lifestyle diseases share risk factors similar to prolonged exposure to three modifiable lifestyle behaviours -- smoking, unhealthy diet, and physical inactivity -- and result in the development of chronic diseases, specifically heart disease, stroke, diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome, chronic obstructive pulmonary ...
Although no legal definition of an “ultra-rare” disease has yet been established, this subcategory was informally introduced by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence for drugs with indications for diseases that have a prevalence <1 per 50 000 persons [1–3].
