Treatment for Accelerated Aging Studied
Posted on: Thursday, 3 May 2007, 12:00 CDT
U.S. scientists say there's new hope for treatment of a rare genetic disease that causes rapid aging, leading to a life expectancy of 13 years.
Washington University scientists studying the genes of two infants who died of mysterious illnesses found the infants had mutations in LMNA, the same gene altered in patients with the premature aging condition progeria.
Both infants died very young and before researchers could fully unravel the cause of their disorders. But when researchers treated cell samples from one of the patients with a drug targeted for progeria, they saw signs the cells were improving.
Our success in treating these cells, which had unusually high levels of bad lamin A, suggests progeria treatment may not be as distant as we thought, said senior author Associate Professor Jeffrey Miner. If physicians can reduce production of bad lamin A by as little as half in progeria patients, we might see significant improvement.
Progeria treatment also has potential implications for larger populations since the LMNA gene is involved in several other more prevalent disorders, including forms of muscular dystrophy and heart disease.
The study results are published online in the journal Human Mutation.
Source: United Press International
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