AT LAST there is hope that Huntington’s 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’s, 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’s disease and strokes, according to a report in
Nature Medicine (vol 6, p 797).
“Clearly, this is not a cure,” says Robert Friedlander of Brigham and…
