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kallistiiScientific American
June 25, 2008
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=existing-drug-reverses-a&sc=rss
By Nikhil Swaminathan
"A drug already on the market for a completely unrelated condition could be used to treat a form of mental retardation linked to autism—if the results of a study in mice hold up, researchers report.
Scientists used rapamycin—a medication doctors prescribe to patients who have had transplants to prevent their bodies from rejecting the new organs—to treat learning disorders associated with a disease called tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) in mice. TSC is a rare genetic disorder that causes brain tumors, seizures, learning disabilities, skin lesions and kidney tumors in the 50,000 Americans and one million people worldwide who have the disease.
Half of those with TSC are autistic, and as many as one in five people with the condition also suffer from mental retardation, so the hope is that rapamycin may be used to treat learning disabilities and short-term memory deficits in all kinds of autism as well, says neurobiologist and co-author of a study in Nature Medicine, Alcino Silva of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles."
(read the rest of the article on the site... http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=existing-drug-reverses-a&sc=rss )
June 25, 2008
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=existing-drug-reverses-a&sc=rss
By Nikhil Swaminathan
"A drug already on the market for a completely unrelated condition could be used to treat a form of mental retardation linked to autism—if the results of a study in mice hold up, researchers report.
Scientists used rapamycin—a medication doctors prescribe to patients who have had transplants to prevent their bodies from rejecting the new organs—to treat learning disorders associated with a disease called tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) in mice. TSC is a rare genetic disorder that causes brain tumors, seizures, learning disabilities, skin lesions and kidney tumors in the 50,000 Americans and one million people worldwide who have the disease.
Half of those with TSC are autistic, and as many as one in five people with the condition also suffer from mental retardation, so the hope is that rapamycin may be used to treat learning disabilities and short-term memory deficits in all kinds of autism as well, says neurobiologist and co-author of a study in Nature Medicine, Alcino Silva of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles."
(read the rest of the article on the site... http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=existing-drug-reverses-a&sc=rss )
