WASHINGTON: A tiny protein seems to be to blame for destroying brain cells in patients suffering from the devastating, incurable Huntington’s disease, a study said yesterday. Another faulty protein, called “huntingtin”, has long been known to be the cause of Hungtington’s Disease.

But now researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore say they have finally worked out why the huntingtin protein accumulates in cells everywhere, but only kills cells in the part of the brain that controls movement. They said in the study published yesterday in Science magazine that the tiny protein, Rhes, only found in the brain cells which cause movement seemed to be to blame.

“It’s always been a mystery why, if the protein made by the HD gene is seen in all cells of the body, only the brain, and only a particular part of the brain, the corpus striatum, deteriorates,” said Solomon Snyder, professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins.

“By finding the basic culprit, the potential is there to develop drugs that target it and either prevent symptoms or slow them down.” — AFP