Potential Breakthrough in Treating Brain Diseases
A team of American doctors and researchers have announced what could be a major breakthrough in the treatment of brain diseases, including Parkinson's disease, using the sometimes controversial gene therapy method. Parkinson's patients in an initial small study saw their mobility increase by as much as 65 percent in some cases after the new treatment, The Daily Telegraph reports.
The study, begun in 2003, was carried out on 11 men and one woman with an average age of 58, who had all had severe Parkinson's for at least five years and for whom current therapies were no longer effective. They were given injections of billions of copies of a genetically altered virus into part of the brain called the subthalamic nucleus ...Three months after the injections, the patients had shown up to 30 per cent improvement. Several showed improvements of up to 65 per cent.
Scientist Live reports that the research team feels the new gene therapy method is in some ways superior to the deep brain stimulation method now used to treat Parkinson's patients because it's less invasive and would require fewer hospital visits.
The research team, lead by Professor Matthew During of the Weill Medical College at Cornell University, will report its findings in today's edition of the British medical journal The Lancet. The Associated Press reports that the scientists will use these initial positive results to conduct a larger test.
9:26 AM ET | 06-22-2007 | permalink
