don’t say we never convey yous the good news

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cevz13xkxpro

big if true

Huntington’s disease successfully treated for first time

An emotional research team became tearful as they described how data shows the disease was slowed by 75% in patients. It means the decline you would normally expect in one year would take four years after treatment, giving patients decades of “good quality life”, Prof Sarah Tabrizi told BBC News. The new treatment is a type of gene therapy given during 12 to 18 hours of delicate brain surgery.

Results from the trial – which involved 29 patients – have been released in a statement by the company uniQure, but have not yet been published in full for review by other specialists. The data showed that three years after surgery there was an average 75% slowing of the disease based on a measure which combines cognition, motor function and the ability to manage in daily life. The data also shows the treatment is saving brain cells. Levels of neurofilaments in spinal fluid – a clear sign of brain cells dying – should have increased by a third if the disease continued to progress, but was actually lower than at the start of the trial. “This is the result we’ve been waiting for,” said Prof Ed Wild, consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery at UCLH. “There was every chance that we would never see a result like this, so to be living in a world where we know this is not only possible, but the actual magnitude of the effect is breathtaking, it’s very difficult to fully encapsulate the emotion.”

yes those hexagons are representing viral capsids