Bipolar drug fixes damaged nerves to restore movement

Sometimes salt is the good guy, in some forms anyway. Lithium chloride ? a salt used as a mood stabiliser in bipolar disorder ? appears to enhance the recovery of damaged neurons in mice. The drug may also help people with damaged nerves regain movement.

Charbel Massaad at Paris Descartes University in France and his colleagues recreated in mice the nerve damage that sports injuries and diabetes can cause in humans. When such damage occurs, neurons lose their myelin sheath ? a coating that insulates the nerve, accelerating electrical impulses. People tend to lose the ability to move limbs as a result. After the mice's facial nerves were damaged, their whiskers became paralysed.

The team put lithium chloride in the rodents' drinking water. These mice completely recovered whisker movement within eight days, compared with mice who drank plain water, who had little movement at 20 days.

A closer inspection of the nerves revealed that myelin sheaths were much thicker in the treated mice.

Massaad hopes the drug will work as well in people: "Lithium could provide a novel, cheap therapy that stimulates myelination," he says.

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1121367109

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

Have your say

Only subscribers may leave comments on this article. Please log in.

Only personal subscribers may leave comments on this article

Subscribe now to comment.

All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.

If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/1ccc0868/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Carticle0Cdn214990Ebipolar0Edrug0Efixes0Edamaged0Enerves0Eto0Erestore0Emovement0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

news 9 tuscaloosa tuscaloosa earthquake california earthquake california day light savings time curmudgeon