Jay H. Robbins |
That's how long his team has been following clinical cases of xeroderma pigmentosum (XP), a rare, autosomal recessive disorder that causes at least 1,000 times the normal risk of skin cancer1 and also sometimes involves premature neuronal death. Certain DNA lesions found in Alzheimer's exist in some XP patients. In both diseases, free radicals that arise as by-products of oxygen metabolism in the brain appear to cause these lesions. Mutations in nucleotide excision repair (NER), one of several endogenous...
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