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Multiple early trials are under way of drugs that show great promise forimproving the cognitive, anxiety and behavioral problems associated with FXS.
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"Many new treatments target correcting the mechanisms that cause FXS, incontrast to supportive treatments that address various symptoms that dominatedpast research efforts," wrote Elizabeth Berry-Kravis, M.D., Ph.D., in theNational Fragile X Foundation Quarterly(http://www.fragilex.org/html/journals.htm) journal.
Recently featured in Time(http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1818268,00.html) magazine,Fragile X research is being carried out in all corners of the globe. In theUnited States, Congress recently appropriated nearly $2 million for continuedfunding of FXS-related public health activities via the Centers for DiseaseControl in Atlanta. The National Institutes of Health will fund nearly $25million in FXS research this year.
The biennial international conference is preceded on July 22 by NationalFragile X Awareness Day, proclaimed by Congress in 2000. FXS, the world'sleading known cause of inherited intellectual disability (formerly referred toas mental retardation), is also the most common known genetic cause of autism.Scientists are studying FXS as a possible model for better understanding therole that genes play in autism. FXS today affects more than 100,000 Americans.Another one million are carriers of the Fragile X mutation and at risk ofpassing it on to their children and developing the newly discovered conditionsof fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome (FXTAS), a Parkinson's-likecondition causing tremor, balance and memory problems in adults, and fragileX-associated primary ovarian insufficiency (FXPOI), a condition that canresult in premature menopause for women as early as their late teens.
For more information, visit the National Fragile X Foundation web site atFragileX.org (http://www.fragilex.org/html/home.shtml).
SOURCE National Fragile X Foundation
