Monthly Archives: December 2019

Emerging Therapeutics for Neurodegenerative Diseases 2019: Focus on Huntington’s Disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (HD & ALS)

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At present, only a few therapies are available with relatively low success. Both, the clinical and the scientific communities are critically devoted to developing new therapeutic approaches to treat and diagnose neurodegenerative diseases.

At present days, neurodegenerative diseases represent one of the main causes of death in the industrialized economy. Overall characterized by a loss of neurons in particular regions of the nervous system, the subsequent decline in cognitive and motor function that patients experience in these diseases is associated with nerve cell loss.

The most common denominator among neurodegenerative diseases, in addition to nerve cell loss, is inflammation. Although a series of mutant genes and environmental toxins are related to neurodegenerative disorders, the causal mechanisms remain poorly understood.

Neurodegenerative diseases can be defined as multifactorial debilitating disorders of the nervous system. Overall, neurodegenerative diseases affect approximately 30 million individuals worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

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Researchers learn how Ebola virus disables the body’s immune defenses

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GALVESTON, Texas – A new study by researchers from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston uncovered new information on why the Ebola virus can exert such catastrophic effects on the infected person. They’ve described for the first time how the virus disables T cells, an important line of immune defense, thus rendering the infected person less able to combat the infection. The findings are currently available in PLOS Pathogens.

Ebola virus disease is one of the most devastating infectious diseases known to exist, with previous outbreaks resulting in high fatality rates. The particularly aggressive nature of Ebola virus stems from its ability to rapidly disarm the infected person’s immune system by blocking the development of a virus-specific adaptive immune response.

White blood cells are an important part of our immune system. Lymphopenia happens when the white blood T cell count in the bloodstream is lower than normal – in fact, the extent of lymphopenia is one of the strongest indicators of how severe the Ebola infection will become.

“People who survive an Ebola infection are able to maintain their T cell levels over the course of the infection whereas low T cell levels are nearly universally seen in fatalities,” said senior author Alex Bukreyev, a UTMB virologist in the departments of pathology and microbiology and immunology. “The trouble is that we’ve never understood how this T cell depletion occurs, so we set out to answer this question.”

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Scientists now know how Zika and dengue viruses assemble inside host, will improve vaccine and antiviral efforts

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GALVESTON, Texas – Two new studies from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston have unraveled the mystery of how the dengue and Zika viruses assemble when they infect human and mosquito hosts. The results have recently been published in Cell Host & Microbe (for dengue virus) and mBio (for Zika virus).

“These findings represent major progress toward understanding how these deadly viruses are assembled during infection, which provides new opportunities for antiviral and vaccine development,” said Pei-Yong Shi, UTMB professor in the department of biochemistry & molecular biology.

In summary, now that scientists know how Zika and dengue viruses form inside infected cells, this knowledge could be used to deter or stop the viruses from gaining full strength through inhibiting virus formation.

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