Chances to treat childhood dementia
Childhood dementia is an inherited disorder that affects the metabolism of the brain. Initial symptoms include degeneration of sight followed by epileptic seizures, blindness, deafness, dementia and early death. The medical term for childhood dementia is neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (NCL). More than ten types of the disease are known. They are all caused by different genetic mutations. No treatment is available and they are all lethal. Inflammation of the brain discovered The disease is aggravated by an inflammatory response in the brain. The research team of Professor Rudolf Martini, who heads the Section for Experimental Developmental Neurobiology at the Department of Neurology of the Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany, made this discovery a few years ago. Now Martini's group is busy turning this finding into an effective treatment: "Administering the drugs fingolimod and teriflunomide shows an astonishing therapeutic effect on chil...