Floppy baby drugs hope
Infants suffering from an incurable condition known as floppy baby syndrome could benefit from new treatments in future thanks to researchers at the University of Edinburgh.
Spinal muscular atrophy attacks nerve cells, leaving patients with muscle damage and little or no control over their movements.
But the team from the Euan MacDonald Centre showed that in mice, the muscle damage can be reversed with drugs. They hope it could lead to the development of drugs which can improve muscle control and increase blood supply.
Professor Tom Gillingwater said: “We can now focus on trying to block the disease in all affected tissues of the body.”