New tissue eases Huntington's disease.New tissue eases Huntington's disease Huntington's disease, hereditary, acute disturbance of the central nervous system usually beginning in middle age and characterized by involuntary muscular movements and progressive intellectual deterioration; formerly called Huntington's chorea. University of Cincinnati The University of Cincinnati is a coeducational public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio. Ranked as one of America’s top 25 public research universities and in the top 50 of all American research universities,[2] researchers report that transplantingbrain tissue from healthy rat fetuses into rats with chemically induced chemically induced, adj initiating biologic action or response by the introduction of a chemical. Huntington's disease "can produce remarkable recovery of function of both locomotor lo·co·mo·tor or lo·co·mo·tive adj. Of or relating to movement from one place to another. locomotor of or pertaining to locomotion. and more complex psychological tasks.' The results confirm and extend earlier reports, which were more preliminary and narrower in scope, according to psychiatrist Paul R. Sanberg and his colleagues. The investigators injected the rats' brains with normal cellsfrom the striatal portion of fetal brains. The striatum striatum /stri·a·tum/ (stri-a´tum) corpus striatum.stria´tal stri·a·tum n. pl. stri·a·ta appears to be the primary site of disease in the brains of Huntington's victims. In this and other rat experiments, the striatum was substantially damaged--and Huntington's was simulated--by injections with kainic acid. Although previous work had established varying degrees of recovery with such transplants, the Cincinnati scientists performed several transplantations on each rat "in order to determine if more complete recovery of function than that previously found could be obtained.' At three, six and nine weeks following the transplantinjections, the rats were tested on various motor and other activity measures. The results were compared with those of Huntington's diseased rats that received "sham' transplants of adult sciatic nerve and with those of healthy rats that also received sciatic sciatic /sci·at·ic/ (si-at´ik) 1. near or related to the sciatic nerve or vein. 2. ischial. sci·at·ic adj. 1. transplants. The researchers found that while the sham-transplant ratswith Huntington's remained "consistently hyperactive' during the nine-week testing period, "the hyperactivity exhibited by the striatal transplant group prior to transplantation decreased gradually following implants until they reached control levels nine weeks later.' And, when injected with amphetamines Amphetamines Sympathomimetic amines; sometimes called speed; synthetic chemicals that stimulate the central nervous system. Mentioned in: Weight Loss Drugs amphetamines , the experimental rats did not display the "exaggerated' response of the sham transplant group. Other, more complex movements such as rearing up and rotation also appeared to improve in the transplanted rats. Moreover, the researchers report, examination of the brainsfollowing the experiment revealed that "the striatal transplants reconstructed much of the gross morphology of the lesioned [damaged] striatum in recovered animals.' "The present, preliminary findings,' they say, "confirm[previous] results and extend them by demonstrating that large fetal transplants can completely reverse some aspects of . . . locomotor activity in rats with large . . . striatal lesions.' |
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