Dr. Juan Botas of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, who worked on the study, said researchers can experiment with the proteins and the genes responsible for their production.

"When you tinker with some of these genes, you find that some of them improve the symptoms. These could be potential therapeutic targets," Botas said in a statement.

"When you tinker with others, it makes the Huntington's more aggressive. These might be ones that accelerate the age of disease onset. Not everyone with Huntington's develops symptoms at the same age."

NO CURE, EFFECTIVE TREATMENT

An estimated 30,000 people have Huntington's disease in the United States alone and it occurs worldwide in about 1 in every 10,000 people.

It is caused by a single copy of a mutated gene and people who inherit it always develop the disease.

Huntington's can start off with confusion and personality changes, but sufferers later lose the ability to move, think and communicate. They often die from choking, heart failure or infection.

There is no cure or effective treatment.

Botas, a team at privately held Prolexys Pharmaceuticals, in Salt Lake City, Utah, and others studied fruit flies genetically engineered to have a disease that resembles Huntington's in humans.

They used high-tech screening of genes and proteins to identify the 200 that interact with the mutated Huntington's gene.

"We are hoping that researchers will look at this study and that those with specific expertise in a particular protein will move forward with their own inquiries," said Robert Hughes of the Buck Institute for Age Research in Novato, California, who worked on the study.

"It points in the direction for future work, which is important," said Oliver, who was not involved in the research.

Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.

Plan to urge breast feeding scrapped in Japan

Last Updated: 2007-05-11 10:41:12 -0400 (Reuters Health)

TOKYO - Plans to urge Japanese mothers to breast-feed and sing lullabies to their babies and for families to turn off the TV during meals have been scrapped, Kyodo news agency reported.

Mothers were urged to look into their baby's eyes while breast-feeding in a draft of a report by a government panel that was due out this week. It had also warned that the Internet and mobile phones give children a "direct connection with the evils of the world."

But the release of the report by an education reform panel was called off at the last minute in an apparent response to criticism that it went too far in meddling with people's private lives, Kyodo reported.

Improving education has also been a priority in efforts to boost Japan's faltering birthrate. The fertility rate -- the average number of children a woman bears in her lifetime -- hit a record low of 1.26 in 2005.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged when he took office last year to reform Japan's education system by reviving patriotism in the nation's classrooms.

The education system came under fire earlier this year after a series of student suicides linked to bullying, and parliament enacted a law in December aimed at encouraging schools to teach patriotism.

Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.