Modern Surgery For Scoliosis Has Good Long-Term Outcomes

Medical News Today, Article Date: 05 Apr 2011,

Teenagers who undergo spine fusion for scoliosis using the newest surgical techniques can expect to be doing well 10 years after surgery, according to a Hospital for Special Surgery study published online ahead of print in the TK issue of the journal Spine. Read more...

Could thiazolidinediones increase the risk of heart failure in Friedreich's ataxia patients?

Movement Disorders, 26: n/a. doi: 10.1002/mds.23711

García-Giménez, J. L., Sanchis-Gomar, F. and Pallardó, F. V.

CIBERER, Biomedical Network Research Centre on Rare Diseases, Valencia, Spain
Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
Fundación del Hospital Clínico Universitario de Valencia. FIHCUV-INCLIVA, Valencia, Spain

Keywords: Friedreich's ataxia; rare disease; neurological symptoms; hypertrophic cardiomyopathy; rosiglitazone; pioglitazone; heart failure; peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma coactivator-1α.

Patient's Own Cells May Hold Therapeutic Promise After Reprogramming, Gene Correction

ScienceDaily (Apr. 4, 2011) — Scientists from the Morgridge Institute for Research, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of California and the WiCell Research Institute moved gene therapy one step closer to clinical reality by determining that the process of correcting a genetic defect does not substantially increase the number of potentially cancer-causing mutations in induced pluripotent stem cells.

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Younger Cardiac Patients Benefit From Hypothermia Therapy

Medical News Today, 04 Apr 2011

Young adult patients with genetic heart diseases, such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), substantially benefitted from therapeutic hypothermia, which could further extend the role for this treatment strategy in new patient populations. read more....
(Source: Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation)

MHC Mismatch Inhibits Neurogenesis and Neuron Maturation in Stem Cell Allografts

Chen Z, Phillips LK, Gould E, Campisi J, Lee SW, et al. 2011 MHC Mismatch Inhibits Neurogenesis and Neuron Maturation in Stem Cell Allografts. PLoS ONE 6(3): e14787. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0014787

The role of histocompatibility and immune recognition in stem cell transplant therapy has been controversial, with many reports arguing that undifferentiated stem cells are protected from immune recognition due to the absence of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) markers. This argument is even more persuasive in transplantation into the central nervous system (CNS) where the graft rejection response is minimal.

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Efficient mining of haplotype patterns for linkage disequilibrium mapping.

J Bioinform Comput Biol. 2010, Volume: 8, Supplementary Issue 1(2010) pp. 127-146 DOI: 10.1142/S0219720010005142

Lin L, Wong L, Leong TY, Lai PS (*).
School of Computing, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
(*) Department of Paediatrics, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore

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.../...

3.2. Friedreich ataxia
Friedreich ataxia is an autosomal recessive degenerative disease that involves the
central and peripheral nervous system and the heart. The friedreich ataxia dataset
was first reported by Liu et al. for linkage disequilibrium mapping. This dataset
contains 58 disease haplotypes and 69 control haplotypes with 12 microsatellite
markers. The gene is located between the fifth and sixth markers, approximately
9.8125cM away from the leftmost marker. The total region size in this study
is 15 cM.
.../...

Mitochondrial iron trafficking and the integration of iron metabolism between the mitochondrion and cytosol

This presentation is interesting because makes a short review and shows an overview of the various current theories on the possible functions of frataxin and its relationship with the FA

HDAC1 and HDAC2 control the transcriptional program of myelination and the survival of Schwann cells

Nature Neuroscience 14, 429–436, (2011) doi:10.1038/nn.2762
Published online, 20 March 2011.

Claire Jacob, Carlos N Christen, Jorge A Pereira, Christian Somandin, Arianna Baggiolini, Pirmin Lötscher, Murat Özçelik, Nicolas Tricaud, Dies Meijer, Teppei Yamaguchi, Patrick Matthias & Ueli Suter

In Schwann cells, HDAC1 and HDAC2 exert specific primary functions: HDAC2 activates the transcriptional program of myelination in synergy with Sox10, whereas HDAC1 controls Schwann cell survival.

Stem Cell Research May Lead To New Treatments For Parkinson's Disease, Huntington's Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Stroke, Spinal Cord Injury

Medical News Today, Article Date: 26 Mar 2011

As always, they forget the rare diseases, but I think this aproach is also useful for FA.

A group of scientists at Marshall University is conducting research that may someday lead to new treatments for repair of the central nervous system.

Price said the neurons they found appear to have many of the qualities desired for cells being used in development of therapies for slowly progressing, degenerative conditions

Multipotent progenitor cells derived from adult peripheral blood of swine have high neurogenic potential in vitro. Nadja Spitzer, Gregory S. Sammons, Heather M. Butts, Lawrence M. Grover, Elmer M. Price.Journal of Cellular Physiology, 2011; DOI: 10.1002/jcp.22670

Short-term low-frequency electrical stimulation enhanced remyelination of injured peripheral nerves by inducing the promyelination effect of brain-derived neurotrophic factor on Schwann cell polarization

J Neurosci Res. 2010 Sep;88(12):2578-87.

Wan L, Zhang S, Xia R, Ding W.
Department of Anatomy, Medical College of Nanchang University, Nanchang 330006, China.

Keywords: Electrical stimulation (ES), nerve injuries, direct neurite outgrowth, peripheral remyelination, P0, Par-3, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), dorsal root ganglion neuron/Schwann cell, 20-Hz ES, Schwann cell myelination.