Prevention of Neural Tube Defects By Nucleotide Precursors In the Curly Tail Mouse

Abstract

Evaluation of: Leung KY, De Castro SC, Savery D et al. Nucleotide precursors prevent folic acid-resistant neural tube defects in the mouse. Brain 136(Pt 9), 2836–2841 (2013). In this study, the authors examined the effects of treating curly tail mutant mice, a folate-resistant mouse model, with specific combinations of pyrimidine and purine nucleotide precursors in an effort to prevent neural tube defects. These investigators found that the prevalence of neural tube defects in the group treated with combinations of thymidine and purine nucleotide precursors was significantly lower than that observed in the control groups. Before combination of nucleotide precursors can be used as a new neural tube defect intervention strategy, the beneficial effects, the side effects, as well as other physiological consequences have to be carefully evaluated and compared with other folate-resistant mice and, ultimately, investigated in human cohorts.