Newsbriefs ----------------------------------------------------------------- ALS will benefit from sale of elite seats at No. 2,131 Even as he overtakes Lou Gehrig, Cal Ripken will be going to bat for Johns Hopkins and victims of Lou Gehrig's disease. The Baltimore Orioles are building special on-the-field seats at Camden Yards for the Sept. 6 game when Ripken is expected to break Gehrig's major league record of 2,130 consecutive games played. Tickets for the seats are being sold at $5,000 apiece; Ripken and the Orioles will donate $1 million in proceeds to Hopkins to establish a Ripken/Gehrig fund for research into amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. ALS is the neuromuscular disease that forced Gehrig to end his "Iron Man" streak and eventually killed the Yankee great. It has been known ever since as "Lou Gehrig's disease." The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions have the world's largest research group studying ALS, its cause and possible treatments. Johns Hopkins sees more than 200 new ALS patients each year and, in the past nine years, has been the site of eight clinical trials for ALS treatments. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Street drug Ecstasy may result in lasting damage The recreational drug Ecstasy, already suspected of causing brain damage, may do lasting harm by causing key nerve cells in the brain to grow back abnormally, according to results of animal study. The findings support earlier indications that the drug MDMA, often called Ecstasy, may cause lasting damage to nerves that produce serotonin, an important chemical messenger in the human brain associated with mood and personality traits. The findings are published in the August issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. "MDMA causes an abnormal regeneration, or rewiring, of the nerve cells that release serotonin," said George Ricaurte, the study's senior author and assistant professor of neurology. "The results are further evidence that people using high doses of MDMA may be putting themselves at significant risk for brain injury." In a 1994 study, Ricaurte led the first controlled human study with MDMA. The results suggested MDMA users were vulnerable to the same type of brain damage shown previously in animal studies. But researchers did not know if the damaged serotonin nerve cells eventually recovered. Results of the current study showed that the damaged cells recovered abnormally in most of the monkeys and a few of the rats 12 to 18 months after they received the drug. The cells recovered in some areas, but in other areas the serotonin nerve fibers did not grow back or overgrew. Researchers now are trying to determine why the nerve cells grow back normally, abnormally or not at all, and whether the damaged nerve tissue disrupts mood, memory and other functions associated with serotonin. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Test developed to help early Marfan diagnosis Researchers at the Children's Center have devised a method that should allow the reliable diagnosis of Marfan syndrome at the eight-cell stage of fetal development. Used in combination with in vitro fertilization, carriers of this inherited disease may now have the means to bear only unaffected, healthy children, they say. Traditionally, scientists waited 10 to 12 weeks after conception to diagnose Marfan syndrome, said Hal Dietz, lead investigator of the study, which appears in the August issue of Nature Medicine. Because it can be severe, and pregnancy is taxing to women with the disorder, quick findings are especially important to carriers. Marfan syndrome, affecting nearly one in every 10,000 people, is characterized by skeletal deformity, dislocation of the ocular lens of the eye, and expansion and ultimate rupture of the aorta, often resulting in death. -----------------------------------------------------------------