AT LAST there is hope that Huntington鈥檚 disease, a fatal and incurable brain
condition, might one day be treatable. An everyday antibiotic called minocycline
alleviates symptoms in mice with the equivalent disease, say researchers in the
US.
In Huntington鈥檚, a faulty gene makes brain cells commit suicide en masse.
Minocycline puts a brake on this by inhibiting key enzymes called caspases that
initiate programmed cell death. The drug might also slow cell death in other
conditions such as Alzheimer鈥檚 disease and strokes, according to a report in
Nature Medicine (vol 6, p 797).
鈥淐learly, this is not a cure,鈥� says Robert Friedlander of Brigham and Women鈥檚
Hospital in Boston, who led the research. But it is an exciting step towards
developing a combination drug therapy for Huntington鈥檚, he says.
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