Health Tourism News

Scientists at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have discovered a new gene in the brain that plays a dominant role in causing microcephaly, a brain disorder that shrinks the size of the brain and life-long reduced mental faculty, particularly in India.

So far, four genes were known to cause this disorder, which was hereditary.  The IISc team has now located the fifth gene, which plays a key role behind the disorder in India.  The discovered gene is known to be the major cause of the microcephaly disorder, especially in Indians.
 
The National Institute on mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) has been instrumental in the research.  During the investigation, the IISc scientists and their colleagues from NIMHANS had collected blood samples across a number of families in Bangalore, Mangalore, Mysore and places in Tamil Nadu and the investigation was carried out at the IISc.  The incidence of microcephaly I Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh among others, to prevalence of consanguineous marriages.

This brain disorder, shrinks the size of the brain in affected persons.  Typically, the brain of a microcephaly patient weighs 430 gm, whereas that of a normal person is 1,459 gm.  The intelligence quotient of microcephaly patients range mild to severely low.  As a result of this, microcephaly affected persons remain mentally challenged throughout their lives.
 
So far, though microcephaly could be diagnosed in the embryo, the results were not reliable until the third trimester.   At such a late stage of pregnancy, abortion would not be possible as it was illegal and dangerous.   But the finding by the IISc scientists will help regular screening tool to detect this severe disorder at an earlier stage of pregnancy where abortion is possible.
 
The discovery of this new gene is a great contribution to mental sciences and is worthy of several accolades indeed.