New Hope for Reversing Brain Disorders
April 28, 2011
For three months, 70-year-old Marya lay passively in her hospital bed with a thin tube running under her scalp. Her mind virtually destroyed by Albers's disease, she was scarcely aware of the tube or its contents-a hormone that rejuvenates brain cells-that dripped deep into her brain. The hormone, called nerve growth factor, is present in healthy brains but is deficient in Alzheimer's victims. Marya's doctors at Southville Hospital were hoping to show for the first time that as the nerve growth factor slowly spread to different parts of her brain, it would ``plug in'' to receptors on cells damaged by the disease.
