Gene Therapy Used Against Alzheimer’s
An experimental surgery in California in April was the first time gene therapy was used on an Alzheimer’s patient. Doctors at the University of California at San Diego injected a 60-year-old woman in the early stages of the disease with millions of her own cells. Neurosurgeons Hoi Sang U, MD, and John Alksne, MD, took part in the operation. “The patient is doing marvelously. And there has been absolutely no side effects,” said Dr. U. The medical team, led by neurologist Mark Tuszynski, MD, may not know for months or longer if the procedure will slow the disease process. A Phase I trial, the procedure was intended to make cells harvested from the women’s own skin deliver more nerve growth factor where it’s needed. The growth factor has been shown to prevent the death of those brain cells that use acetylcholine. Similar gene therapy is envisioned for use against Parkinson’s disease and possibly Lou Gehrig’s disease and Huntington’s disease.
Paralysis Treatment Shows Promise
A clinical trial has shown success at repairing severed spinal cords, according to Israeli researchers. Melissa Holley, an 18-year-old American, regained movement in her toes and legs a year after undergoing the experimental treatment in Israel. Holley was paralyzed from the middle of her back down to her toes as a result of a car accident. Holley was the first human to receive autologous activated macrophage therapy, which uses a patient’s own white blood cells drawn from skin and bone marrow to regenerate the severed nerves in the spinal cord. “We take the macrophages and put them with the wounded skin, so we educate them,” Valentin Fulga, MD, of Proneuron Biotechnologies in Israel told CBS’s The Early Show. “We then take the macrophages, which are now more mature and hopefully more effective, and we put them into a small syringe. The neurosurgeon injects them into the spinal cord and that’s all.” Dr. Fulga said Proneuron has performed the procedure on three people in the Phase I trial and wants to test it on at least five more patients. The treatment was based on the research of Michal Schwartz of the Weizmann Institute of Israel. In a 1998 study published in Nature Medicine, most of the adult rats whose spinal cords were cut were able to move their hind legs after macrophages were injected into their cords.
Link Between Computers, Carpal Tunnel Debunked
Heavy computer use does not increase a person’s risk of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), according to a new study from Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz. The research results, published in the June 12 issue of Neurology, indicate that only 10.5 percent of the study participants, all of whom used computers extensively, met clinical criteria for CTS. This was the first major study of the association between the syndrome and computer use. “We had expected to find a much higher incidence of carpal tunnel syndrome in the heavy computer users because it is a commonly held belief that computer use causes carpal tunnel syndrome,” said neurologist J. Clarke Stevens, MD, lead author of the study. Research suggests one person in 10 will develop symptoms of CTS over a lifetime. Though the workers in the Mayo study didn’t develop CTS at a higher rate than the general population, they did report “a lot of aches and pains in the neck, shoulder, arm and wrist,” said Dr. Stevens.
More Sophisticated MRIs
More powerful MRI machines that reveal brain function will soon become part of clinical medicine, according to the Chicago Tribune. Several vendors are now marketing 3 Tesla magnetic scanners to clinical centers. The 3 Tesla machine produces signals much easier to read than the commonly used 1.5 Tesla machine and can monitor blood flow and not just reveal brain anatomy. The more powerful MRI is expected to be useful to surgeons in excising abnormalities and for physicians in diagnosing pathology such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases and in monitoring the progress of stroke patients undergoing therapy. The 3 Tesla machines have been used by medical researchers for several years to study the brain.
| Neurosurgeon Wins Award What does neurosurgeon Keith Black, MD, of Los Angeles, have in common with tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, actor Samuel L. Jackson and Hans and Ivan Hageman (brothers who began in alternative school in Harlem)? He was honored with a 2001 Essence Award in May. Essence is a New York-based magazine for African-American women with a circulation of more than 1 million. Broadcast on network television, the Essence Awards celebrate black achievement. Dr. Black is the director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Essence saluted him for the “unerring skill he brings to excising brain tumors” and “unravel[ing] the mysteries of life itself.” |