Alexander disease

Hello, and welcome to Alexander Disease Research Update, episode number 36, recorded on September 14th, 2026.

I'm Albie Messing from the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin, and with me today is Dr. Abby Olson from the University of Pittsburgh.

Abby's been on before, but I'll just mention that she specializes in movement disorders, especially Parkinson's disease and related conditions, while also being intimately familiar with Alexander disease, having seen a few adult-onset patients and doing a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Melfini at Harvard, who developed the first Drosophila models of Alexander disease.

Before we get started, please send feedback and questions to my email at amessing at wisc.edu. Also, we should begin by acknowledging the biggest news of the past month, perhaps even the past few years, which is the FDA approval of the antisense treatment for Alexander disease.

It's such big news that we're still while processing it and trying to figure out exactly what that will mean.

I'm trying to line up some guests to come on the podcast to talk about it, but that has to be a future event.

Today, our topic won't be about the specifics of a recent publication, but rather the general issues that this publication raises.

The paper I'm referring to is by Jingping Fang and colleagues entitled, Adult-Onset Alexander Disease Presenting as Atypical Parkinsonism and Autonomic Dysfunction, a case series which just came out in the Journal of Clinical Medicine.