A DRUG that helped four patients with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease for a short time has revived hopes of a treatment for the fatal brain disease – if doctors can prevent it damaging the liver and accumulating in the brain.
The former anti-malarial drug quinacrine was first tried as a treatment for vCJD, the human form of mad cow disease, last year. It seemed to cause a dramatic recovery in British patient Rachel Forber. But she stopped taking the drug after liver complications, and died last December.
The new study carried out by scientists at Fukuoka and Kyushu universities in Japan, was presented…
