Preliminary research suggests a decades-old antibiotic may help Huntington’s disease patients by preventing mutant cells from wreaking havoc in the brain.Studies in the laboratory and in mice suggest that Clioquinol could potentially become the first weapon against Huntington’s disease, which is incurable. “There’s no really good treatment at this point,” said study co-author Dr. Stephen Massa, a neurology researcher at the VA Medical Center in San Francisco. Clioquinol is “as promising as anything we’ve seen."However, he cautioned that the drug, which is also being tested as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, has a long way to go before it could be used in clinical practice. “There are a lot of things that scientists try in animals and in (laboratory) cultures that never end up making it all the way to people."There’s plenty at stake in Huntington’s research. An estimated one in every 10,000 Americans has the disease, which causes rapid, uncontrolled movements, like Parkinson’s disease, and can eventually lead to a variety of mental and physical problems. Death usually occurs within 10 to 25 years of diagnosis.
