Lorenzo's Oil Shows Promise in Treating Genetic Illness

[papau]

Augusto and Michaela Odone (who died of cancer in 2000) in 1989 showed that Lorenzo's oil (a combination of fats extracted from kitchen products such as olive oil and rapeseed oil) can reduce the level of dangerous fatty acids and inspired the 1992 movie "Lorenzo's Oil."


http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-lorenzo12jul12,0,2857283.story?track=tottext

THE NATION
Lorenzo's Oil Shows Promise in Treating Genetic Illness
A mixture that gave a '92 film its name is found to delay the effects of a rare brain disease in boys.
By Alex Raksin
Times Staff Writer

July 12, 2005

Lorenzo's oil — a dietary supplement concocted by Virginia parents in a last-ditch effort to save their son's life — appears to delay the effects of a rare genetic disease in young boys if taken early and in concert with a low-fat diet, according to the first long-term study of the treatment reported today in the Archives of Neurology.

The study followed 89 boys who had the genetic mutation for childhood cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy, and found that 74% of them remained healthy after 13 years.

The results "are very favorable," said Dr. Hugo W. Moser, a pediatric neurologist at Baltimore's Kennedy Krieger Institute who led the study. "In the general population, half of the boys with the genetic mutation develop severe neurological abnormalities by age 7."

The disease, which strikes about 1 in 30,000 children, develops when long-chain saturated fatty acids accumulate in the blood. The acids gnaw away at the protective myelin sheath that covers the brain's nerve fibers, depriving patients of the ability to speak, see and move within five years. The illness usually leads to death within seven years.<snip>