November 19th, 2009

Did you know that researchers have discovered a treatment that improves cognition in mice with their species’ version of Down syndrome?

Reports Reuters:

Increasing the levels of a message-carrying chemical in the brain may help prevent some of the memory deficits in Down syndrome that hinder learning and make it hard for the brain to develop normally, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

They said mice with a rodent version of Down syndrome that were injected with drugs to increase levels of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine — which nerve cells use to communicate — showed improvements in their thinking ability.

The finding points to a new way of trying to improve some of the deficits seen in Down syndrome, which affects 5,000 newborns in the United States each year.

“If you intervene early enough, you will be able to help kids with Down syndrome to collect and modulate information,” said Dr Ahmad Salehi of the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System, whose study was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

“Theoretically, that could lead to an improvement in cognitive functions in these kids,” Salehi, who worked on the study while at Stanford University School of Medicine, said in a statement.

Down syndrome occurs when a person has an extra copy of chromosome 21. At birth, children with Down syndrome are not developmentally delayed, but memory deficits linked with the disorder hinder normal brain development.

Find out more at Reuters.