The results of a phase I clinical trial for Huntington disease shows significant promise, The Guardian reports. For the first time, a drug against the debilitating, inherited neurodegenerative disease lowered the amount of toxic protein that causes symptoms in people. The treatment, which was injected into the fluid around patients’ spines four times over as many months, kills the messenger that relays instructions for making the disease-causing protein. Although the results could mean similar progress for other neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s disease, the trial was small, with only 46 patients, and did not last long enough to know whether patients’ symptoms, like the erratic, uncontrollable movements that characterize the disease, improved.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/drug-huntington-s-disease-shows-promise-landmark-trial
