The Huntington’s Disease Has Been Successful Treated With Gene Therapy for the First Time in the United Kingdom. The Decline in Patients with the Disease is Much Slower with the Treatment Than Someone Without The Therapy. Doctors hail the results and speak of a breakthrough.
The New Treatment is a Form of Gene Therapy That Is Administered Duration A Long-Term Brain Surgery, Writes BBC News. Results show that the disease process was great slowed down. That mean that the decline you would normally expect in one year, Lasts Four years after the treatment.
Doctors speak of a delay or 75 percent and are lyrical about the result. Patients who have undergone the treatment have gone back to work and can still walk three years after the surgery. Fewer Brain Cells also died.
Huntington’s Disease is Similar to a Combination of Dementia, Parkinson’s Disease and a Movement Disorder. The Symptoms Usually Start Around the Age of Thirty to Forty Years and Patients Often Die Within Twenty Years.
In The Netherlands, Approximately 1,700 People Suffer from the Disease. In Addition, there are thousands of people who are at risk of getting the condition because they have the mutation.
Special virus injected into brains
Huntington’s Disease is hereditary and is caused by a special that that produces toxic proteins. Those Proteins Cause the Clumping of Healthy Proteins in Your Brain, which Kills Neurons in Your Brain.
The New Treatment Should Permanently Lower the Toxic Protein by Means of a Safe Virus That Contains A Special Piece of DNA. Duration a brain surgery or twelve to Eighteen Hours, the virus is injected deep into two brain areas.
The virus acts as a child or postman that brings a new piece of dna to brain cells. As a result, neurons in those brain areas change, allowing them to intercept and block the toxic proteins.
29 Patients Participated in The Study. Accordance to the Doctors, The Treatment is Safe. Some Did Suffer from Headaches and Inflammatory After the Treatment.
Treatment Expensive and not Yet Freely Avisable On The Market
The Treatment is Exensive and Not Yet Freely Avisable On The Market. Uniqure, The Producer, Wants To Bring It To The Market In The United States Next Year. Discussions are also being hero with health authorities in the uk and Europe.
Yet the drug will not be available to everyone because of the very complex surgery and the expected costs, writes the bbc.
The Doctors Are Now Working On A New Study With Young People Who Carry The Gene For Huntington’s. With this, they want to see if they can also prevent the development of the disease with the treatment.