首页
登录
职称英语
An experimental treatment for Parkinson’s disease seemed to improve symptoms—
An experimental treatment for Parkinson’s disease seemed to improve symptoms—
游客
2023-12-22
36
管理
问题
An experimental treatment for Parkinson’s disease seemed to improve symptoms—dramatically so, for one 59-year-old man—without causing side effects in an early study of a dozen patients. The gene therapy treatment involved slipping billions of copies of a gene into the brain to calm overactive brain circuitry. More than half a million Americans have Parkinson’s. They endure symptoms that include tremors, rigidity in their limbs, slowness of movement and impaired balance and coordination. Eventually they can become severely disabled.
The small study focused on testing the safety of the procedure rather than its effectiveness, and experts cautioned it’s too soon to draw conclusions about how well it works. But they called the results promising and said the approach merits further studies. "We still have quite a bit more testing to do," said Dr. Michael Kaplitt of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, an author of the study. Still, "the initial results are extremely encouraging".
Nathan Klein, a 59-year-old freelance television producer in Port Washington, N.Y., said the disease left him "pretty messed up". It weakened his voice, impaired his walking and made his hand tremble so badly he couldn’t hold a glass of wine without spilling it all. Klein was the first patient to be treated with Kaplitt’s gene therapy procedure in 2003, and he said his symptoms gradually subsided afterward. Nowadays, he said, apart from freezing now and then when he wants to walk, the symptoms are basically gone. "I’m elated," said Klein, who continues to take his regular pills for the disease. "It’s unbelievable."
Kaplitt, who has a financial interest in Neurologix Inc., which paid for the research, noted that the 12 patients in the study still have Parkinson’s symptoms. The amount of medication they were already taking for their symptoms didn’t change significantly in the year after the surgery. Current medicines can control symptoms, but can’t stop the disease from getting worse over time, and they can produce troublesome side effects like uncontrollable movement.
Some patients gain relief from a surgical treatment called deep brain stimulation, in which electrodes are placed in the brain and connected to a programmable stimulator. Kaplitt’s procedure was aimed at achieving the same goal as that surgery, calming overactive circuitry in the brain. It gets overactive because it loses the normal supply of a chemical called GABA. The gene therapy was designed to make the brain produce more GABA.
For the gene therapy surgery, a tube about the width of a hair was threaded through a hole about the size of a quarter at the top of the skull. The tube delivered a dose of a virus engineered to ferry copies of a gene into cells of a brain region called the subthalamic nucleus. The gene copies enable the cells to pump out more GABA. [br] The passage is mainly about______.
选项
A、the gene therapy treatment
B、Parkinson’s disease
C、GABA
D、the research done by Dr. Michael Kaplitt
答案
A
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3296449.html
相关试题推荐
MymotherandOlgahadmetwhileunderwentfertilitytreatmentsatsomesortof
Epidemicsof________diseasecanescalateintopandemicsandcostalotoflives.
Ifyouwantto________fromthedisease,youmustrestwellandfollowthedoctor
Herworseningsymptoms—theforgetfulnessandconfusion,thedifficultiescommuni
Betweenthe1950sand1980s,wesawtremendousimprovementsinthesafetyof
ThelatePopehadcuredhimselfofParkinson’sdisease,thusmovingastepclose
ThelatePopehadcuredhimselfofParkinson’sdisease,thusmovingastepclose
[originaltext]Malariaisoneofthethreemostprevalentseriousdiseasesinth
[originaltext]Malariaisoneofthethreemostprevalentseriousdiseasesinth
AIDSisoneofthemaindeadlydiseasesaffectingpeoplearoundtheworld.[orig
随机试题
NewresearchfromtheUnitedStatessuggeststhatthemillennia-oldtherapy
Whatcanweinferfromthisnewsitem?[originaltext]TheNewYorkPhilharmo
Itdoesn’tcomeasasurprisetoyoutorealizethatitmakesnodifference
TheLostArtofListeningA)"Whywon’theevenlistentomyidea?""Why
如今每逢圣诞节来临,中国的城市到处都是圣诞的迹象。圣诞节越来越受到人们,尤其是年轻人的欢迎。其他的西方节日,如感恩节(ThanksgivingDay)
三元乙丙橡胶防水卷材属于()。A.石油沥青防水卷材 B.煤油沥青防水卷材
理财规划书的最后部分是“附录”,主要包括()。A.所推荐金融产品的具体信息
下列各项中,不符合内部牵制的要求的是()。A、出纳人员管票据 B、出纳人员
以下哪项是相畏配伍的目的A.减少个体差异 B.更易吸收 C.加速分布
Intheprocess,thelightenergyconverts
最新回复
(
0
)