Lithium can reverse radiation damage after brain tumour treatment
Children who have received radiotherapy for a brain tumour can develop cognitive problems later in life. In their studies on mice, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now shown that the drug lithium can help to reverse the damage caused long after it has occurred. The study is published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry and the researchers are now planning to test the treatment in clinical trials.Nowadays, four out of five children with a brain tumour survive. In the adult Swedish population, 1 in 600 people have been treated for childhood cancer, about one third of which were brain