Slashdot Mirror
Doctors Reverse With Drugs Autism-Linked Fragile X Syndrome In Mice
An anonymous reader writes "New research by a team of Bangalore-based scientists has given hope to those with emotional problems caused by the inheritance of a fragile X chromosome. The researchers, for the first time in the world, mapped defective connections between nerve cells in the emotional hub of the brain of mice who had Fragile X Syndrome. The research has just been published in the online edition of the US-based Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences." Besides the mapping of these nerves, though, "The NCBS team has shown that even the long-term ravages of the condition could be reversed with medication in mice." Fragile X syndrome is associated with autism, though the conditions do not map directly to each other.
There has to be some way to tie an Indian Call Center Joke into this...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Doctors Reverse With Drugs Autism-Linked Fragile X Syndrome
What?
I put the 't' in electrical engineering.
What the hell is with that headline?
Up to 20% of boys with autism have the condition due to Fragile X.
In other words, at least 80% of individuals with autism need to find hope for a cure somewhere else.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
1. Aparna Suvrathan a,
2. Charles A. Hoeffer b,
3. Helen Wong b,
4. Eric Klann b, and
5. Sumantra Chattarji a,1
- Author Affiliations
a National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore 560065, India; and
b Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, NY 10003
These are lab findings in cells of knock out mice and indicate that the process may be still amenable to pharmaceuticals. All you Asperger's at /. keep this in mind!
In other words, at least 80% of individuals with autism need to find hope for a cure somewhere else.
20% is an insignificant number? Not if your child has Autism. And suppose you had Cancer, would you pass on looking into a treatment because it "ONLY" had a 20% rate of potential improvement?
Hoestly, what is your point?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
The symptoms are similar but they are only tangentially related. The headline is incredibly misleading by suggesting a drug has been produced that can reverse autism, which is of course not true.
Try June 25, 2007
Both the /. and original news headline claim that scientists have found a way to "reverse" the fragile-x syndrome, but the study simply says that they have "mapped" the defective connections. That doesn't mean they know how to fix them yet...
From June 27, 2007:
Autism Reversed in Mice at MIT Lab
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Editors confuse with word order many slashdot readers
My oldest son has Fragile X and is diagnosed in the Autism spectrum. It's an incredibly impairing disability, and I'll be asking his doctor to keep on eye on the clinical trials.
On a side note, as well voiced thus far, what headline is the hell up with what is there? For cryin' out loud.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
How awkward...
They supposedly mapped the connections involved.
They previously determined what enzyme caused the damage and found something to inhibit it.
They *assert* that they could possibly reverse the damage using this inhibiting enzyme. COULD.
Inhibiting damage can prevent. You cannot inhibit damage already done. Inhibition and reversal are not the same. Nor are the two syndromes involved.
Times of India ranks up there with Pravda when it comes to truthful accuracy, especially when it comes to home ground science. The "for the first time" gets read as though nobody had ever done this mapping before. It could as easily mean it was the first time they did it. It has been done before.
The asserted reversal has also been done before. Not by them or by their New York friends, but at MIT.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
The horse raced past the barn fell down. Ha - made you reparse!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I read the wiki article. Epistemology, thus neuroscience, is a main area of interest for me. I'm very reticent about jumping on the band wagon for stuff like this just because what we call mind and behaviour is very complex. The American biologist, Gregory Bateson wrote a couple of wonderful, thought provoking books, 'Steps to an Ecology of the Mind', and, 'Mind and Nature'. In 'Mind and Nature' Bateson referenced an idea made famous by A. Korzybski that Bateson put as, "The Map Is Not The Territory, And The Name Is Not The Thing Named". Science, to my mind, is, for the most part, a process of elegant, rigorous, robust mapping. That having been said, I can't see that we're anywhere near being able to celebrate having reliably mapped something like autism, the more so because behaviour is so much a socially derived and defined thing. Just to further my point, there is currently (sorry not enough time to track down the links) an area of research suggesting that during conception sperm and egg can wage chemical warfare. The sperm wages war to ensure a fertilized egg is given the most resources the female has available for the fetus, while the egg can wage chemical warfare to limit the amount of resources a fetus is given because the female may not see the offspring to be "worthy" of her full allocation of resources. The outcome can demonstrate aberrant states like schizophrenia.
This stuff is like anti-psychotic medicines that target the dopamine system in schizophrenics. It can show benefits but only with potentially, highly detrimental side effects, and is nowhere near representing a clear understanding of the disease.
not at all my bailiwick, but just thought I'd throw my two pennies in the pot
ideopath @ play
Doctors Reverse With Drugs Autism-Linked Fragile X Syndrome In Mice
Autism Drug Reverses Fragile X Syndrome in Mice
Drug Reverses Autism-Linked Fragile X Syndrome In Mice
Fragile X Syndrome in Mice Reversed by Autism Drug
Autism-Linked Fragile X Syndrome reversed in Mice
Mice treated for Autism-Linked Fragile X Syndrome with new Drug
However, The Lancet just published a study by a well-known British surgeon which found these drugs frequently caused MMR.
You agree with me.
I guess it didn't work on the guy who wrote the headline.
Doctors Reverse With Drugs Autism-Linked Fragile X Syndrome In Mice
Doctors With Drugs In Mice Reverse Autism-Linked Fragile X Syndrom
Doctors In Mice With Drugs Autism-Linked Fragile X Syndrom Reverse
Mice With Drugs Reverse In Doctors Fragile Autism-Linked Syndrom X
Drugged Autist Mice Reverse In Fragile Doctors With X-Linked Syndom
Drugs With Mice Doctors Replace Fragile Autism With Linked X Syndrom
My Brain Hurts!
A "DUH" moment.
Fragile X syndrome is associated with autism in humans. It does not map directly to classical autism because there are additional symptoms that are not always present in autism, and most people with autism do not have the fragile X genetic defect.
So it is not clear whether a drug that cures fragile X in humans would help most autistic people.
This is stupid. Pharmaceutical companies are businesses. They care about the bottom line. Do you really think that pharmaceutical companies would use animal models for drug discovery if they did not work? Do you really imagine that 8% of randomly selected chemical compounds would be effective in treating humans? Eight percent is doing extremely well. The role of animal testing is not to verify with certainty that a drug will work in humans, but rather to filter out the overwhelming majority of drugs that do not work in either humans or animals. Generations of research have shown that the biochemical effects of a drug are almost always similar in humans or animals. If a drug does not work as desired in animals, the likelihood that it will work in humans is negligible. Ultimately, there are certainly subtleties of human biology that require testing in humans. But if the most toxic molecules were not already filtered out by animal testing, the risks of human testing would be so great that drug testing would be ethically unacceptable for anything other than terminal diseases (and perhaps not even those).
Human testing will ultimately be necessary to determine whether a drug that cures symptoms of Fragile X in animals will cure autistic symptoms of Fragile X in humans, much less autism in general, because autism is a behavioral syndrome that relates to unique human behaviors. But the chances are much better for a drug that successfully treats the symptoms of fragile X that are recognizable in animals, rather than for a random chemical. And even if it only treated the other symptoms of fragile X, it would still be valuable