Nutrition may help Down’s Syndrome
“A new mice study by Stanford University indicates that an old useless drug may actually help patients with Down syndrome improve their learning ability and memory. The study published Feb. 25 in the advance online edition of Nature Neuroscience also found that once the therapeutic effect of pentylenetetrazole, or PT is established, it can last for up to two months after the treatment is discontinued.
Craig Garner and Fabian Fernandez from the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital fed mice with Down syndrome symptomes milk with PTZ for 17 days, subjected the treated mice to two tests and found that mice treated with PTZ performed as well as wild mice without Down syndrome.
PTZ has not been approved by the government for any medical use. High doses of PTZ can cause seizures. The researchers say the drug did not improve mental capacity in those healthy mice. They say further human trials are needed to determine if PTZ has the same effect on patients with Down syndrome.
Down’s syndrome, the leading cause of mental retardation, affects more than 300,000 people nationwide in the U.S. About 5,000 children are born with Down syndrome in the United States each year. The condition is caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21. Children with this condition have high risk of heart disease, leukemia and early onset Alzheimer’s disease.”
Quite an interesting idea, eh?
Nutrition May Help Those With Down’s Syndrome
nutrition, down’s syndrome, illness, genetics, food, preventatives, Stanford University
Leave a Reply