Minocycline may be a potential therapeutic agent for the treatment of Huntington's disease, according to US researchers.
Dr Robert Friedlander (neuroapoptosis laboratory, Harvard medical school) and colleagues found that minocycline delayed disease progression in mice. They treated mice with daily minocycline from a late presymptomatic stage and compared the mice with two control groups treated with either saline or tetracycline. The researchers found that minocycline significantly delayed disease progression and extended mean survival compared with saline-treated mice (98 days survival compared with 86 days). Minocycline was found to inhibit caspase-1 and decrease inducible nitric oxide synthetase activity. A detrimental role for both enzymes has been proposed in Huntington's disease, the researchers say. Tetracycline was found to have no effect. This suggests that minocycline must act directly on the brain because it crosses the blood-brain barrier whereas tetracyline does not, they say (Nature Medicine 2000;6:797).