Have Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia — An Anavex Connection
I do have a hereditary neurological condition with a significant Anavex connection, I believe. I present the following, to allow readers to determine if I have a tainted or self-serving view of Anavex. That may have been inferred by some readers.
I have a mild case of hereditary spastic paraplegia, HSP. This, as with Rett syndrome and a good number of other central nervous system diseases, is genetic in origin. For me, with my form of the condition, the long motor nerves of my spine, controlling the adductor muscles of my legs, are hyperactive, causing chronic (on-going) tension or spasticity. My gait is inhibited. I have complete proprioception, an understanding of the location, extension, control and restricted movement of my legs. I can walk, but require a small walker in front of me, for support. I can drive with utter control and safety, able to perfectly control the throttle and braking functions.
Just before I retired from teaching, at the turn of the millennium, a neurologist did a complete work-up on me, as the spasticity had grown more debilitating. He said most likely one of the many forms of HSP. A few years later, I had to take up the walker.
Of course, I scrutinized all of the medical literature on the condition, and at the time there were about 30 identified phenotypes, or variations of the disease. It was clear, my particular set of symptoms (many lesser ones) pointed to an un-described version. Much later, a medical paper delineated 60 or so new variations. I was in one of those.
Now, here’s the Anavex connection. Last year or so, in my expansive scrutiny of journal articles involving Anavex 2-73 I came across a French paper where a researcher had treated transgenic rats who had been genetically manipulated with a human HSP gene with Anavex 2-73. At the start, these rats walked poorly, with spastic, locked back legs. As with me, their long motor neurons in the spine were constantly firing, tensing certain leg muscles.
Then, Anavex 2-73 was added to the water in their cages. In time, just a few weeks as I recall, the rats started ambulating normally. Leg spasticity and other symptoms were suppressed — just as we hope will happen with the little girls with Rett syndrome (as with HSP, a genetic disease).
Ineptly, I somehow mis-filed that French paper. I’ve spent a lot of time searching on the web for it, to no avail. It’s listed in my computer files, among the many dozens of others, but when I try to open it, I get some sort of file error message. The file is corrupted in some, irretrievable way. (If anyone discovers the URL, please post.)
No matter. I have the sound, evidence-based prospect of being able in a year or two to walk normally once again, without my standup walker.
This, of course, is but another isolated but noteworthy indication that the Anavex molecules can have a wide, diverse set of treatment and prevention applications beyond the few diseases presently being targeted.
Had it have been available when I was a kindergartner, I would have been spared the humiliation I endured from Miss Dillenschneider, my teacher. She castigated me for “refusing” to sit cross-legged on the floor while she read us stories. She thought I was being obnoxious. Instead, the spasticity was already occurring, to the degree that crossing my legs was physically impossible.
(None of that relates to the condition I mentioned in my previous post, where I devised a quite successful treatment regimen for another rare condition I had. That did not involve neurological dysfunction in any Anavex-applicable manner. Unrelated.)
