Nervous System News and Research

Latest Nervous System News and Research

Researchers develop new mouse model to study supertasting

Supertasting describes the ability to strongly detect food flavors such as bitter and sweet, and it can affect a person's food preferences. For example, supertasters are often averse to green vegetables because their bitter taste is amplified. Supertasters may also prefer foods lower in sugar and fat. Approximately one out of four people is a supertaster, and a supertaster's avoidance of sweet and fatty foods may have protective cardiovascular effects.

22 Jun 2012

Foods fortified with folic acid can prevent neural tube defects

Wheat flour milled in Nigeria will soon be fortified with folic acid, a B vitamin known for preventing serious or fatal birth defects of the spine and brain. Women who may become pregnant are encouraged to daily choose foods fortified with this essential vitamin because it can prevent the majority of these devastating birth defects known as neural tube defects.

21 Jun 2012

Researchers can silence mutated gene responsible for Huntington's with single drug treatment

With a single drug treatment, researchers at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine can silence the mutated gene responsible for Huntington's disease, slowing and partially reversing progression of the fatal neurodegenerative disorder in animal models.

21 Jun 2012

Researchers discover protein required to regrow injured peripheral nerves

A protein required to regrow injured peripheral nerves has been identified by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

21 Jun 2012

Childhood viral CNS infections increase psychosis risk

Viral infections of the central nervous system in childhood are associated with nearly a two-fold increased risk for non-affective psychosis and schizophrenia in adulthood, a review and meta-analysis of published studies shows.

20 Jun 2012

HCHD to offer APTA-accredited post-professional physical therapy residency programs

The Harris County Hospital District joins only one other public healthcare system in the nation to offer two post-professional physical therapy residency programs with the recent accreditation of the Neurologic Physical Therapy Residency by the American Physical Therapy Association.

20 Jun 2012

Furiex initiates MuDelta Phase III studies in IBS-D

Furiex Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced dosing of the first patient in its Phase III randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies evaluating efficacy, safety and tolerability of MuDelta (JNJ-27018966) in the treatment of diarrhea-predominant irritable bowel syndrome (IBS-D).

20 Jun 2012

e-Therapeutics commences enrollment in ETS2101 phase I trial for brain cancer

e-Therapeutics plc announces the start of the first clinical trial evaluating its compound ETS2101 as a treatment for cancer. The phase I trial is enrolling patients with primary brain cancer (glioma) or cancer that has spread to the brain from other sites.

19 Jun 2012

Simple sponge may hold clues about the evolution of the complex nervous system

UC Santa Barbara scientists turned to the simple sponge to find clues about the evolution of the complex nervous system and found that, but for a mechanism that coordinates the expression of genes that lead to the formation of neural synapses, sponges and the rest of the animal world may not be so distant after all.

19 Jun 2012

Pfizer receives FDA Complete Response Letter for tafamidis meglumine NDA

Pfizer Inc. announced today that it has received a Complete Response Letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on its New Drug Application (NDA) for tafamidis meglumine.

19 Jun 2012

Positive interim data from Innate MIS416 Phase 1/2 clinical trial for chronic progressive MS

Innate Immunotherapeutics today announced positive interim data from the company's Phase 1/2 clinical trial of MIS416 in patients with chronic progressive multiple sclerosis (MS).

18 Jun 2012

Researchers identify commensal bacteria in the human intestine

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital have identified commensal bacteria in the human intestine that produce a neurotransmitter that may play a role in preventing or treating inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn's disease.

18 Jun 2012

Researchers develop double viral vector transfection technique

The collaborative research team led by Professor Tadashi ISA, Project Assistant Professor Masaharu KINOSHITA from The National Institute for Physiological Sciences, The National Institutes of Natural Sciences and Fukushima Medical University and Kyoto University, developed "the double viral vector transfection technique" which can deliver genes to a specific neural circuit by combining two new kinds of gene transfer vectors.

18 Jun 2012

Health Canada approves Sunovion’s LATUDA NDA to treat schizophrenia

Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Canada Inc. today announced that the New Drug Submission (NDS) for LATUDA (lurasidone HCl), for the treatment of adult patients with acute schizophrenia has been approved by Health Canada.

16 Jun 2012

Civitas commences CVT-301 Phase 2a trial in Parkinson's disease

Civitas Therapeutics, Inc., a privately-held pharmaceutical company developing transformative therapeutics using the ARCUS respiratory delivery platform, announced today the initiation of a Phase 2a clinical trial in Parkinson's disease patients evaluating CVT-301, an inhaled formulation of levodopa (L-dopa), for the rapid relief from motor fluctuations.

16 Jun 2012

Researchers identify three sets of genetic markers linked with CNS PNET

Researchers at The University of Nottingham have identified three sets of genetic markers that could potentially pave the way for new diagnostic tools for a deadly type of brain tumour that mainly targets children.

16 Jun 2012

NextGen commercializes new assay for identification of biomarkers in brain disorders

NextGen Group Plc, the AIM listed company developing its own diagnostics product pipeline and providing diagnostic biomarker development services, announces the commercialisation of a new assay for the identification of diagnostic biomarkers in brain disorders in animal models.

15 Jun 2012

Advances in robotic spine surgery

1. Please could you give a brief outline of robotic spine surgery and its recent history? Robotic spine surgery is very new, less than 10 years old. There are only 10 hospitals in the US offering it and we are the second hospital in California to offer this technology.

15 Jun 2012

Single gene forms common link between diabetes and Alzheimer's

In recent years it became clear that people with diabetes face an ominous prospect - a far greater risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. Now researchers at The City College of New York (CCNY) have shed light on one reason why. Biology Professor Chris Li and her colleagues have discovered that a single gene forms a common link between the two diseases.

15 Jun 2012

Study strengthens link between HHV-6B and mesial temporal lobe epilepsy

A ten-year NIH-funded study has determined that a third of infants with prolonged seizures and fever suffer from either a new or reactivated roseola virus infection. Roseola viruses are the cause of the common childhood rash, but can also cause limbic encephalitis, a condition that frequently progresses to epilepsy. Investigators discovered one of the roseola viruses, human herpesvirus-6B (HHV-6B) in the blood of 32% of 169 infants with prolonged seizures, a condition known as status epilepticus.

15 Jun 2012