Gene Therapy: Promise for Parkinson's

The preceding attempts with growth promoters did not filter outside. The new approach employs the gene therapy - injecting a virus which carries a gene which produces alternatively the neurturin growth promoter - to try to obtain the protective protein line where it needed.

None of the first 12 patients to undergo the experiment - at the university of the hospital of university of precipitations of California, San Francisco and Chicago - suffered serious side effects, Dr. Philip Starr of neurosurgeon of UCSF brought back Monday.

One year after treatment, three patients did not show any difference on a standard rating scale of the movement. But the others nine showed an improvement of 38 percent, Starr said a meeting of the American association of the neurological surgeons.

That does not mean the worked therapy, informed Starr. It could have been coincidence; some preceding attempts found the councils similar of the effectiveness, to only fail once put at a more rigorous test.

But the results encouraged enough that the researchers are registered the victims of more than Parkinson - 56 of them - for the next stage of the test. A third of these patients will undergo the surgery of pretence, obtaining the holes did not drill inside their craniums but any gene-bearing virus, to try to tease outside if the therapy really functions.

Gene Therapy: Promise for Parkinson's

First dozen the Parkinson patients to have boreholes inside their craniums for an attempt at gene therapy of novel were not harm - and the councils with a certain improvement have researchers to embark on a greater study to see whether the treatment really can function.

The doctors reported preliminary results of the experiment narrowly observed at a meeting Monday of neurology, but informed that it is remote too early to raise hopes.

With the question: Use of a growth promoter of nerve to try to save the cells of brain of death.

Approximately 1.5 million Americans have Parkinson, a disease which gradually destroys the cells of brain which produce the dopamine, a crucial chemical for the cellular one announcing that movement of muscle of orders. Not enough dopamine causes increasingly serious tremors and periodically stiff or frozen members.

The standard treatments can order tremors during one moment but cannot stop the inevitable walk of the disease. Thus the scientists are manners of hunting of protecting the neurons remaining dopamine-producers, and the delivery those of deaths.