MS discovery sparks predictable treatment hopes

Scientists reporting in the New England Journal of Medicine report that three genes will offer new understanding to multiple sclerosis and may lead to new treatments. Skeptics among us will be forgiven for remembering that scientists had the same idea half a century ago, after French geneticist Jerome Lejeune identified the triple 21st chromosome in Trisomy 21 (Down syndrome). And have new treatments for Down syndrome materialized? Nope. There are, however, lots of very profitable prenatal screens and tests that are widely used to prevent the births of infants with Down syndrome.

Autism: Random? Or mom?

So does autism occur randomly? Or can it be traced genetically to mom? Two publications report two different views of an autism study from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Scientific American reports the scientists came up with a new genetic model for autism that divides families into two groups: those with a low likelihood of children with autism, and those with a higher likelihood.

"The team determined that most cases of autism arise from novel, spontaneous mutations passed down from one or both parents, resulting in large gaps in a person's genome often encompassing several genes, which are then disrupted or inactivated."

[Why those spontaneous mutations might be occurring at an estimated rate of one in every 150 children was not discussed.]

Newsday pointed instead at mom's role in conveying autism.

"What Wigler and his team found is a previously unrecognized pattern: Mothers, they say, acquire genetic mutations spontaneously that are specific to autism, which can be passed to their children. The mothers do not themselves exhibit traits of the disorder, but they have a 50 percent chance of transmitting the trait."

Once again, those refrigerator moms can't win.

More Sunday stories

-- Alzheimer's advocates counter misconceptions among minority communities. From the Boston Globe. The campaign is part of an effort to address cultural barriers to dementia care among African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latinos and other groups.

"Driving the initiatives is concern that increasing numbers of African-Americans and Latinos are at high risk of Alzheimer's and other types of dementia because they have cardiovascular disease or diabetes, and because they are reaching their 60s, 70s and 80s, when dementia typically strikes."

-- Tips for planning vacations for people with disabilities. From the Dallas Morning News.

-- Harvard business school student with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) uses B-school techniques to encourage research into drug treatments. From the Boston Globe.

The next generation of bionic people

New Yorker staff writer Ben McGrath chronicles the life of Claudia Mitchell, a young woman who loses her arm in an accident and gets a bionic replacement. The story in the July 30 issue is available at newsstands, not on the Internet.

Alzheimer's treatment seen

And while we're on the subject of doom, Alzheimer's style, British researchers report that an effective treatment may not be far off. From the (London) Evening Standard. Link here.