A simple nasal spray could be developed to combat some types of dementia as well as the most common genetic form of motor neurone disease (MND). British scientists, who lead the world in this kind of research, think they are getting close to developing a remedy to fight these debilitating conditions, and halt the devastating death of nerve cells that leads to disability and death, reports the Mirror.
Early-stage studies by Sheffield University suggest using a small peptide may block mutant repeated strands of information from being used by the body to make toxic components that contribute to frontotemporal dementia. The peptide is a molecule containing several amino acids and lab studies suggest it could prevent the death of the nerve cells.
Author Professor Guillaume Hautbergue said: “When we tested our innovative approach by adding the peptide to the food eaten by fruit flies, not only did the peptides block the damaging mutations which cause MND and FTD from being transported to the cell’s nucleus, we actually saw an improvement in their neurofunction.
