Study finds way to protect rabbits from cerebral palsy

Posted on March 2, 2009 at 9:19pm by

A team of scientists has created two chemical compounds that appear to protect a fetus from developing brain damage or cerebral palsy from a lack of oxygen.

The team used experiments with rabbits to synthesize the compounds. These compounds block an enzyme in brain cells that produces nitric oxide. At normal levels, nitric oxide is important for brain functioning, but at high levels it can cause brain damage.
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An excess of nitric oxide in the brain is believed to play a role in cerebral palsy.  In experiments with rabbits, excess nitric oxide caused most of the fetuses to die, and those that survived were severely brain-damaged. All of the animals treated with the synthetic compounds lived, while those given the placebo died. Among the rabbits given just one of the compounds, up to 80 percent were born normal.

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The researchers believe that these compounds can be developed to treat infants with compromised oxygen levels before cesarean delivery. Before the treatment can be used on humans, however, the next step is to experiment with sheep.



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