Batten Disease and Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinoses NCL blog Batten Disease is named after the British pediatrician who first described it in 1903. Also known as Spielmeyer-Vogt-Sjogren-Batten Disease, it is the most common form of a group of disorders called Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinoses (or NCLs). ...

The potential and safety of using stem cells to treat diseases suffered a setback with the news of a botched experimental treatment of a human being. A teenage boy who received fetal stem cells developed brain cancer four years after the transplant, reports PLoS Medicine this week. The patient suffe...

PHG Foundation | Cell-free nucleic acids for non-invasive prenatal diagnosis: " Cell-free nucleic acids for non-invasive prenatal diagnosis is the result of a project funded and led by the PHG Foundation. An expert Working Group including GPs, obstetricians, midwives, geneticists, NHS commissioners,...

Lately I've been thinking a lot about how much we, as humans, know about our bodies. It's amazing, really. I mean, think about it: we have decoded the human freakin' genome, people. It doesn't get more detailed than that. And then again, we know so little about how it all works together. At the geno...

Link: Prevention Ronald M. Green, professor of Ethics at Dartmouth College, authored an opinions column for The Washington Post over the weekend entitled "Building Baby from the Genes Up" (April 13). While acknowledging the concerns of those leery of eugenic "slippery slopes," Green hails the possib...

Link: Genes Six genes newly tied to autism are not missing but merely turned off, according to new Children's Hospital Boston research published today in the journal Science. "The circuits are there, but you have to give it an extra push," said Dr. Gary Goldstein of Maryland's Kennedy Krieger Instit...

Link: SPD Many pediatricians, neurologists, psychologists and teachers have never heard of sensory processing disorder, the head of Denver's Sensory Therapies and Research Center says, as many as one in 20 children may need help to manage unusual reactions to their senses....

Link: Testing A new Google-funded Web site will allow users to have their DNA analyzed for $999, explore how their DNA compares with others and participate in scientific studies. Creators are working with Autism Speaks to eventually tackle genetic research....

Link: Autism University of California-Davis researchers have identified 11 genes regulating immune responses that are more active in children with autism in a small study published in the January edition of Genomics. Children with early-onset autism had far fewer active immune genes than those who d...

Link: Autism Researchers are examining the brains of people with autism in an attempt to find subtle changes that may cause the disorder. "The technology now exists to be able to examine in fine detail the organization of brain cells," said Eric Courchesne, a University of California-San Diego neuro...