[Source: MIT News]
A molecule that promotes brain development could serve as a possible treatment for Rett syndrome, the most common form of autism in girls, according to researchers at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.
The researchers found that injecting the molecule into mice that have an equivalent of Rett syndrome helped the animals’ faulty brain cells develop normally and reversed some of the disorder’s symptoms.
The work, reported in the Feb. 10 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), is expected to lead to new human clinical trials for a derivative of growth factor-1 (IGF-1), currently used to treat growth disorders and control blood glucose. The MIT study indicates that IGF-1 could potentially lessen the severity of symptoms of Rett syndrome.
Read More About this Research on the MIT website