Adolescence is the time when most mental health problems arise. Diagnoses of psychiatric illnesses increase across the board, with teenagers suffering not only from mood disorders such as depression, but also from the most pervasive psychiatric illnesses, such as schizophrenia or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
The impact of such illnesses is substantial. Suicide is one of the top five most common causes of death in adolescents.
If mental health researchers have long been aware of this sharp rise in psychiatric illnesses, we still struggle to understand and explain why teenagers are so vulnerable to them. One reason for this may be a lack of information on quite how the brain changes in adolescence. To this end, my colleagues and I recently undertook research following a group of teenagers over several years. We were able to assess not only how their brain develops during adolescence, but also how this was related to their evolving mental health.
Scientists develop RNA-based therapeutic strategy for Charcot-Marie Tooth disease
Charcot-Marie Tooth disease is the most common hereditary neurological disease in the world. It affects the peripheral nerves and causes progressive paralysis of the legs and hands.
No treatment is currently available to fight this disease, which is due to the overexpression of a specific protein. Scientists from the CNRS, INSERM, the AP-HP and the Paris-Saclay and Paris universities have developed a therapy based on degrading the coding RNA for this protein in mice. Their work is patented and was published on 9 March 2021 in
Communications Biology.
In molecular biology, transcription is when a DNA molecule is copied to make an RNA molecule. This RNA molecule is then translated into a protein, which can perform different functions within the body s cells. When a specific protein called PMP22 is made twice as much as normal, it causes type 1A of genetic Charcot-Marie Tooth disease to develop. This
Remyelinating drug shows potential to improve vision in patients with MS
A team led by a biomedical scientist at the University of California, Riverside, reports a drug an estrogen receptor ligand called indazole chloride (IndCl) has the potential to improve vision in patients with multiple sclerosis, or MS.
The study, performed on mice induced with a model of MS and the first to investigate IndCl s effect on the pathology and function of the complete afferent visual pathway, is published in
Brain Pathology. The afferent visual pathway includes the eyes, optic nerve, and all brain structures responsible for receiving, transmitting, and processing visual information.
Myelin‐specific T cells implicated in central nervous system disease in monkeys
Scientists have uncovered new clues implicating a type of herpes virus as the cause of a central nervous system disease in monkeys that s similar to multiple sclerosis in people.
The findings, published in the
Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, expand on previous work to understand the cause of the disease and potentially develop antiviral therapies. The work was led by scientists at Oregon Health & Science University. This gives us a better understanding of the model, said Scott Wong, Ph.D., senior author of the study and a scientist at the OHSU Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute and the Oregon National Primate Research Center. It draws more parallels to MS in people.
Novel compound appears to protect myelin and nerve fibers
A compound developed at Oregon Health & Science University appears to protect nerve fibers and the fatty sheath, called myelin, that covers nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord.
The discovery, published in the
Journal of Neuroimmunology, could be important in treating or preventing the progression of multiple sclerosis and other central nervous system disorders. The new research in a mouse model advances earlier work to develop the compound - known as sobetirome - that has already showed promise in stimulating the repair of myelin.
Sobetirome and related drugs are effective at stimulating myelin repair after damage has occurred. Our new findings now suggest that these drugs could also prove to be beneficial for preventing damage from occurring. It means that these drugs have a dual effect that we didn t know about before.