Mouse with iron disorder offers clues to Parkinson's, similar diseases
...e basal ganglia, the group of brain cells atop the spinal cord, which assist in movement. These mice also had high blood levels of the iron storage protein ferritin. "In the corresponding human diseases, you see only the end result," Dr. Rouault said. "With these mice, we know that the primary event i...Study uncovers new contributor to brain damage, suggesting novel drug target
... contribute to adult brain damagefor example after spinal cord injury and stroke. The results appear in the... of acute nervous system injury such as stroke and spinal cord injury as well as in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimers disease. "If the implication...Can Superman get off the ventilator and breathe normally?
...chers develop implantable breathing device to help spinal cord injured CLEVELAND- Physicians at Universi...fully developed a new breathing system that allows spinal cord injured patients to breathe on their own, without a ventilator. Thirty-six-year-old Tom Con...AAAS urges President Bush to fund stem-cell research
...llnesses, including Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, spinal cord injury, and heart disease. In addition, the study of stem cells could contribute to the understanding of birth defects and the development of new drugs targeted at specific diseases. The letter, which was signed by Mary L. Good, chair of the A...Weizmann Institute scientists block loss of eyesight in animals with a glaucoma-like disease
...who has also developed an immune-based therapy for spinal cord injuries now being tested in a clinical trial, believes thatcontrary to accepted wisdomautoimmunity can play a beneficial role in the body. A series of studies in her lab has shown that immunization with fragments of proteins belonging to myelin...Mouse gene trap helps decipher brain's wiring diagram
...e to their appointed destinations in the brain and spinal column with help from navigation systems in their axons. Axons establish connections, or synapses, with remote target cells, networking some 100 billion neurons in humans. Growth cones at the axon tip steer a weaving course, taking their cues from ch...Calcium signals found to guide nerve cell development
...ire up proper connections in the developing brain, spinal cord, and other parts of an animal's body. "These ...any kinds of birth defects and a large fraction of spinal cord defects appear to be associated with problems in the formation of nerve connections in the deve...Researchers find new clues to nerve cell development
...e developing nervous system, neurons in the brain, spinal cord and elsewhere in the body send out long axons...ong the way. Gomez and his colleagues studied frog spinal nerve cells they kept alive in a culture dish. They loaded the neurons with a fluorescent calcium in...Growing neurons use silencing mechanism to avoid disastrous tug-of-war
...eurons. The discovery might also help explain why spinal cord neurons cannot be easily induced to regenera...attracted by netrin to a target way station in the spinal cord and then repelled from it toward the next way station by Slit. In their Science artic...Scientists discover how nerve cells move from target to target as they wire up the developing embryo
...effect. Using a previously described isolated frog spinal axon as an assay, they showed that in the presence of both the attractant and repellent signals, an element on the axon's repellent receptor, Robo, physically binds to an element on the attractant receptor called DDC, inactivating it. In this conditi...Talking device keeps HIV patients on the straight and narrow
...ount of virus HIV patients carry in their blood or spinal fluid. The device is not a new therapy: It's an el...e 10-fold drop in viral presence in their blood or spinal fluid when compared with control patients. "This is an impressive decline for such a relatively sim...... found that inhibiting Cox-2 production within the spinal cord and brain decreased pain and reduced hypersensitivity to normal sensations such as touch. Researchers now believe the widespread distribution of Cox-2 within the central nervous system may contribute to muscle and joint pain, depression, lethar...MGH researchers shed new light on how pain killers work
...be expressed in nerve cells in many regions of the spinal cord and brain. This previously unknown centraliz...tem involvement, drugs delivered directly into the spinal cord required significantly lower doses than drugs administered systemically. Finally, the re...New light shed on vitamin A's role in the body's natural defenses
...sclerosis, the immune system attacks the brain and spinal cord. In arthritis, the joints are attacked and in inflammatory bowel disease, the gut is the target. Modified forms of interferon are currently being used to treat various autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, arthritis, inflammatory bo...Study points to positive results from vitamin D supplements for MS sufferers
...n which the victim's own immune system attacks the spinal cord and brain. The disease afflicts about 350,000 people in the United States alone and its cause is thought to be a complex interaction of genetics and environmental forces that are not completely understood. Cantorna and others hypothesize that ...Agent Orange might boost the risk of leukemia, UNC researcher says
...the unusual and debilitating birth defect known as spinal bifida in children, respiratory cancers, prostate cancer, multiple myeloma, both acute and sub-acute transient peripheral neuropathy and porphyria cutanea tarda, another skin disorder, Hertz-Picciotto said. That evidence was weak and inconclusive, ho...$100,000 prize to pioneers in neural research
...s with these disorders or with traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries may be treated by regrowing the right type of CNS cells and by coaxing their damaged cells into regrowing the right types of connections. Beginning 20 years ago, Dr. Goodman has focused his research on advancing the molecular-level k...Device liberates quadriplegic from ventilator
...injured his neck. He damaged the upper part of his spinal cord. When he awoke from a coma weeks later, he wa...elieve that 400 to 500 people each year who suffer spinal cord injuries could benefit from the new device. DiMarco said he hopes that in the long-term future,......of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in the saliva, spinal fluid, semen and vaginal fluid, as well as in the ...ients suffering flu-like symptoms to donate semen, spinal fluids and other fluids. A fairly large group of AIDS researchers now believe primary infection......ic acid and vitamin B12 in the diet may exacerbate spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a genetic disease that attacks motor neurons. The scientists are planning to collaborate with clinicians to explore whether these vitamins might ameliorate the severity of symptoms in some SMA patients. In a research ...