Pediatrics Frontiers: Gene Therapy for SCIDS

The effects of video games and surrogacy

NO MORE BUBBLE

    WASHINGTON

    Gene therapy has proved successful in treating two children suffering from a hereditary immune system disorder that requires them to live in a "bubble" protected from germs. Writing in the journal Science, Italian and Israeli researchers said it was another step to the method used in 2000 by a French team of scientists who first succeeded in treating children suffering from severe combined immunodeficiency disorder (SCID).

    The disease, marked by the complete absence of defensive cells, leaves its sufferers vulnerable to infection that can lead to death if they are left outside the sterile bubble or are unable to get a bone marrow transplant.

    "With gene therapy, you can treat every patient, and the toxicity is enormously lower than for bone marrow transplants," said study co-author Claudio Bordignon of the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy and the Universita Vita-Salute San Raffaele in Milan, Italy. "We propose, at this stage, that every patient lacking a donor with an identical tissue type should be directed to gene therapy."

    The two children treated in the study suffered from ADA-SCID, in which their bodies do not make the ADA enzyme needed for immune-cell production.

    Doctors first removed some of the patients' bone marrow to isolate their blood stem cells, which can develop into red and white blood cells. Then they exposed the cells to a genetically modified virus carrying a healthy ADA gene, which was inserted into the stem cells' genome.

    Before injecting the modified cells, the researchers followed another step, known as nonmyeloblative conditioning, which they believe will increase the chances of successfully treating SCID because it helps the cells implant themselves. "Nonmyeloblative condition means you don't really wipe out the bone marrow," Bordignon said. "You just give one of the drugs used for a transplant, at a much lower dose, to make 'space' for engineered marrow to seize, expand and grow better."

VIDEO GAMES SLOW DOWN BRAIN

    TOKYO

    A Japanese scientist had warned that playing video games everyday could lower the activity of the part of the brain that controls emotion.

    Akio Mori, a neurology professor specializing in cranial nerve study at Nihon University in Tokyo, plans to present his findings at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in November in Florida. He conducted experiments over the past two years, involving 240 people aged between six and 29.

    According to his findings, people who played video games for two to seven hours per day failed to emit beta brainwaves-a gauge of levels of activity at the foremost part of the frontal lobe which plays a role in controlling emotion and enhancing creativity.

    Mori said if levels of beta brainwaves are very low, people get angry easily and have difficulty in concentrating. He added: "We are very concerned about the impact of video games on children's brains. We are also concerned about a possible impact of video games on the autonomic nervous system, which controls subconscious actions such as breathing."

    One of the subjects who showed little beta brainwave activity recovered normal levels of the brainwave some three months after he stopped playing video games and played with beanbags instead, Mori said.

HAPPY SURROGATES

    LONDON

    Children born to surrogate mothers tend to have healthier relationships with their parents than children raised by their biological parents. A British study found that families with children born in vitro or by surrogate mothers tend to score higher on four aspects of parenting: affection, emotional relationships, maternal quality, and paternal quality, the study found.

    "There is no evidence so far to support the concerns that have been voiced about the practice of surrogacy," researcher Fiona McCullum of City University said. "The surrogacy families seem to be characterized by warm relationships and high quality of parenting."

    The research group, which presented their paper at an annual European reproduction conference in Vienna, also studied a fifth factor-a mother's feelings towards her children. The team found that all three types of families studied-with children born naturally, in vitro, or to surrogates-received similar results.

    "These results are generally positive," McCullum said, adding, however, that "these children were still in infancy and it remains to be seen how these families will change as the children grow up."