PEOPLE with muscular dystrophy have been given fresh hope by gene therapy experiments that have successfully treated the mouse equivalent of the disease. Mouse muscles disabled by the condition started working again after a single treatment.
The researchers who made the breakthrough hope that the approach will also work in human patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a muscle-wasting disease that afflicts 1 in 3000 boys. The muscles of patients gradually wither because they have a faulty gene for making dystrophin, a vital protein that gives muscle cells their shape and strength.
There is no cure. Attempts to treat the condition…
