Islamabad, March 8 (TNS): Restricting food intake to a specific time period each day could benefit people living with Huntington’s disease, a new study indicates.
Having studied mouse models of the disease, researchers found that a strict eating schedule which involved restricting the rodents’ food access to a 6-hour window each day led to significant reductions in the levels of a mutant protein known to play a role in Huntington’s disease.
The study was led by Dagmar Ehrnhoefer, who worked in the Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada at the time. Ehrnhoefer and her colleagues have recently published the results of their study in the journal Acta Neuropathologica Communications. Huntington’s disease is a progressive neurological condition estimated to affect more than 30,000 people in the United States.
Onset of Huntington’s disease most commonly occurs between the ages of 30 and 50. Symptoms include involuntary movements, mobility problems, and cognitive impairment. There is currently no cure for Huntington’s disease and there are no treatments that can slow its progression. Current medications can only help people to manage symptoms of the condition. A drug called tetrabenazine can help to ease chorea, for example.
