Italian researchers have made a breakthrough in the study of a killer nerve-wasting condition often called Lou Gehrig's Disease.
The Milan team have discovered how a protein implicated in the disease is affected by free radicals, making the body's DNA more likely to produce the condition.
The protein, called SODL, has already been blamed for hereditary cases of the disease, whose scientific name is Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).
Now researchers working under Milan University's Angelo Poletti think they've cracked how the process works, paving the way for new treatment.
"We have observed in the laboratory how SODL builds up and loses its normal function of warding off free radicals from nerve cells," Poletti said.
"In other words, the altered protein, trapped in clumps, is less active in the cell nucleus and leaves the DNA more susceptible to attacks from oxidising agents like free radicals".
Poletti said the discovery "is a step forward towards new therapies aimed at acting on the mutated protein and limiting the damage to the DNA".
Although SODL has long been a prime suspect in cases where ALS is inherited, science has yet to find the causes of other and more prevalent types of the disease, which is common among sportsmen.
Lou Gehrig, an prewar American baseball player, was the first top sportsman to die of it.
Italian investigators are probing the suspiciously high number of ASL victims in Italian soccer.
They think it could be linked to the use of performance-enhancing drugs, coupled with repetitive stress injuries such as blows to the head.
The latest research by Milan's University CEND centre, in collaboration with the northern Italian city's Mario Negri Drug Research Institute, has been published in the Human Molecular Genetics journal.
