Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more
•••

hyperparathyroidism

Immune studies suggest remedies for parathyroid hormone-driven bone loss

A common cause of bone loss is an overactive parathyroid gland, which doctors usually treat with surgery. New research on how excess parathyroid hormone affects immune cells suggests that doctors could repurpose existing drugs to treat hyperparathyroidism without surgery.

The results were published October 8 in Cell Metabolism. [My apologies for not posting this in October.]

“Surgery is sometimes not an appropriate remedy for hyperparathyroidism because of the condition of the patient, and it is also expensive,” says lead author Roberto Pacifici, MD. “Also, the one pharmacological treatment that is available, cinacalcet, is not always the ideal solution. This work could potentially lead to alternatives.”

Roberto Pacifici, MD

Researchers at Emory University School of Medicine led by Pacifici teamed up with doctors from the University of Turin in Italy, combining observations of human patients with an overactive parathyroid with experiments on mice.

The drugs identified as potential treatments are: calcium channel blockers, now used to treat high blood pressure, and antibodies that block the inflammatory molecule IL-17A, under development for the skin disease psoriasis. Clinical trials would be necessary to show that these drugs are effective against parathyroid hormone-induced bone loss in humans. Read more

Posted on November 19, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Immunology Leave a comment