Lithium could slow the progression of the killer nerve-wasting condition known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, Italian researchers say.
They say the drug, which is frequently used to fight bipolar disorder (manic-depressive illness), proved superior in new clinical trials to the only drug shown to hold up the disease, riluzole.
''Given daily, lithium significantly attenuated the progression of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis compared to the riluzole patients,'' said Rome University's Stefano Ruggieri, using the scientific name for the disease.
Lou Gehrig's Disease, named after a US baseball star who died of it, is often called simply ALS. Ruggieri, who worked with Patrizia Longone of Rome's Santa Lucia Foundation on groundwork laid by Pisa University's Francesco Fornai, added that none of the lithium patients have died 15 months after the study was completed, compared to two deaths in the riluzole cohort.
The researchers, whose study appears in America's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also conducted experiments with mice to try to establish lithium's action on ALS.
''The drug may have protective effects on neurons, prompting cells to destroy their damaged energy-producing elements, the mitochondria,'' Ruggieri said.
''As well as preventing cell death, this may spur the birth of new nerve cells''.
''This opens up promising prospects for the treatment of ALS,'' the researchers said.
The new research follows a breakthrough made last summer by a team in Milan. They 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.
Researchers working under Milan University's Angelo Poletti think they've cracked how the process works, paving the way for new treatment.
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, scientists have yet to find the causes of other and more prevalent types of the disease, which is common among sportsmen.
Lou Gehrig, a prewar American baseball player, was the first top sportsman to die of it. Hollywood made a still-popular film about him starring Gary Cooper.
Italian investigators are probing the suspiciously high number of ALS victims in Italian soccer.
They think it could be linked to the use of performance-enhancing drugs, coupled with repetitive stress injuries and blows to the head.
