Researchers See Early Promise For Treatments of Alzehimer’s, Autisim in Mice

Separate Research Involving Mice Could One Day Lead to Treatments for Humans

A new Alzheimer’s treatment is proving to be extremely effective in mice, according to the University of Queensland in Australia. Researchers say non-invasive ultrasound technology is used to break up some neurotoxic amyloid plaques in a mouse’s brain, structures thought to lead to a decline in cognitive functions in Alzeimer’s patients. They’re saying in the lab, 75 per cent of mice are showing a return of memory function. Researchers hope to test this method on humans by next year.
Meanwhile, more mice are bearing the brunt for humankind, as researchers say they’ve reversed symptoms of autism in the little rodents. This one is a long way off from being attempted on humans, but they’re saying they’ve seen improvements in mice so far, by engineering a protein that turns on a gene in the brain we’ve all got but misfires sometimes in folks with autism. They’re still trying to better understand the process here, before trying it again on a different species.