Feeling hot, hot, hot: New study suggests ways to control fever-induce...( When your body cranks up the heat its...)

When your body cranks up the heat, its a sign that somethings wrongand a fever is designed to help fight off the infection. But turning up the temperature can have a down side: in about one in 25 infants or small children, high fever can trigger fever-induced (febrile) seizures. While the seizures themselves are generally harmless, a prolonged fever resulting from infection or heatstroke of over 108˚F (42˚C) can eventually lead to respiratory distress, cognitive dysfunction, brain damage or death.

New research by scientists at the University of Toronto Mississauga and Queens University has shown that genetic variation in the foraging gene results in different tolerance for heat stress, and demonstrates how the use of specific drugs can replicate this effect in fruit flies and locusts. While the findings are at an early stage, the researchers suggest that since this genetic pathway is found in other organisms, it could lead to ways to rapidly protect the brain from extremely high fevers in mammals, including humans. The new study appears in the August 22 issue of the journal PLoS ONE, the online, open-access journal from the Public Library of Science.

Our research suggests that manipulation of a single gene or genetic pathway will be sufficient to rapidly protect the nervous system from damage due to extreme heat stress, says senior researcher, Professor Marla B. Sokolowski, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Genetics.

In their research, post-doctoral fellow Ken Dawson-Scully and Sokolowski demonstrate that the foraging gene, responsible for a protein called PKG, protects against heat-induced neural failure in fruit flies and locusts. When they increased the temperature by 5˚C per minute (starting from 22˚C and rising to 42˚C), they found that fruit flies with a lower level of PKG experienced neural failure at much higher temperatures than those with higher levels of PKG.

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