Treatment window for fragile X likely doesn't close after childhood
This new information could become valuable as therapeutic treatments for Fragile X syndrome -- the most common autism-related disorder which results in intellectual disabilities and impacts one in every 4,000 males and one in every 8,000 females -- are still being developed in clinical trials. Michael Akins, PhD, an assistant professor in Drexel's College of Arts and Sciences, led a team that found structures called Fragile X granules in the part of the brain that controls memory, the hippocampus, well into maturity in both rat and human specimens. The granules , which Akins helped discover in 2009, are thought to contribute to Fragile X syndrome when they become decoupled from a gene called FMRP (Fragile X mental retardation protein) that is mutated in Fragile X patients. While Fragile X granules were found in the brains of adult rats and humans, they seemed to disappear in mice when they reached maturity. "It's intriguing that this disease-related gene has differ...