PLT Test Blog

  Many readers have been receiving new posts automatically by email. This was a free service provided by Feedburner, part of Google.   This service is about to be discontinued by Google. I have added a new service provided by a company called Follow.it, which should provide the follow by email service. In theory, the people who subscribed to the Google service should be migrated over to the new service.   If it does not work, you can just subscribe again in the top right corner of the Web version of the blog.  The smart phone version of the blog may not display this feature, because of the small screen size.    

    For leaky ATP, Popeye might want to try Dexpramipexole and Suramin, or even the already approved Mirapex If you are old enough to be a parent, you will have encountered problems with some kind of leak.  A leaky roof, a leaky pipe, a leaky washing machine, an air-conditioning unit... The list goes on, the older you get. I have been preoccupied by fixing a leak recently.   We have a large roof terrace and, in the winter, water started leaking from the ceiling in the floor below.   I improvised a system to catch all the water, but still I had to find the source of the leak. I did finally find the source of the problem and most importantly without digging up 95% of the terrace.   Now I have to put the 5% back together again. Leaks are often extremely difficult to locate, because water always finds the easiest path and the dripping you see might have originated from a leak far away.   Nobody wants to fix leaks, because it can be a pretty thankle...

Betaine (also known as TMG, or trimethylglycine)  is a methyl derivative of glycine, first isolated from sugar beet and hence its name. Today’s post was prompted by our reader, and Covid home-school instructor, AJ.  He raised the question of whether betaine can be used like Bumetanide to normalize chloride levels in neurons. I am combing this idea with news from Genoa in Italy, where they have developed gene therapy as an alternative to Bumetanide and in their words :- “This sets the stage for the development of a gene therapy approach to overcome the shortcomings of bumetanide treatment.” The interesting thing is that neither of these ideas come from autism research.  The idea to use Betaine was stumbled upon and was then written up in a Norwegian case study about Creatine transporter deficiency.  The Italians are trying to improve cognition in brain disorders and their model of choice was Down syndrome.   As we have seen time and again, elevated chloride...