The antibiotic minocycline seems to slow the progression of Huntington's disease in mice. Scientists at Brigham and Women's Hospital-Harvard Medical School in Boston have found that administering minocycline to mice with Huntington's disease resulted in a significant slowing of disease progression (Nature Medicine 2000;6:797-801).

Dr Robert Friedlander, a neurosurgeon, and his team decided to try minocycline (an antibiotic commonly used to treat acne and rheumatoid arthritis) after research published last year showed that mice treated with it both before and after the induction of stroke seemed to sustain less brain damage than mice that were not treated.

Minocycline is known to cross the …