Wolfram Syndrome Researcher Makes Headlines
Tamara Hershey, PhD (left), and Bridget Waller, a student in psychiatry, look at diagrams of the human brain.
Tamara Hershey was recently featured on the Washington University School of Medicine website for her studies in how fluctuations in glucose levels can influence the brain . As well as her work as a neuroscientist, she devotes much of her time studying Wolfram syndrome.
This brain image shows that the volume of white matter is decreased in the brain stem and the cerebellum (yellow and orange area) of young patients with Wolfram syndrome, compared with brains of young people without diabetes.
“Endocrinologists usually are interested in Wolfram syndrome because it’s a genetic form of diabetes,” she said. “But the diabetes aspect of the disorder isn’t what limits the lifespan of a patient. It’s the features outside of diabetes that are so devastating: optic nerve atrophy and neurodegeneration in the brain stem. Before we began our studies, Wolfram syndrome had not been examined extensively from a brain perspective.”
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http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/26170.aspx