Ampakine treatment reverses memory loss in Huntington's disease

Compounds created to combat Alzheimer’s disease, sleep disorders and other neurological ailments reverse Huntington’s disease-related memory loss, according to a UC Irvine study. In tests on mice with HD, neurobiologists Gary Lynch (pictured), Danielle Simmons and colleagues found that a very mild ampakine treatment produced dramatic increases in the brain’s chemical processes for creating and storing memories. The study points to the potential of ampakine-based drugs – which Lynch helped discover and are already used in Alzheimer disease clinical trials – as a treatment for people with HD, a rare and fatal neurological disease. Study results appear in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.