EUROSCA School day: Scientists talk about ataxia in classrooms
Under the motto, 'Ataxia - What's that?', researchers visited schools in five EU countries (Germany, France, Italy, The Netherlands and Hungary) on 26 September to talk to students and teachers about ataxia, a group of rare, late manifesting neurodegenerative diseases characterised by severe movement disorder. The meetings were organised by the EU funded project, EUROSCA, to mark the International ataxia awareness day, celebrated the previous day. These neurodegenerative diseases are called spinocerebellar ataxias (SCA): 'cerebellar ' refers to the cerebellum, the part of the brain that, among other things, controls balance and coordination, while the word 'ataxia' simply means 'lack of coordination'. Cerebellar ataxias are disorders in which the nervous system is affected, causing progressive problems such as unsteadiness and lack of coordination of the arms and the legs. The disorder develops when a person is in his or her 20s or 30s, and there is a very large variation in the severity of the symptoms as the disorder progresses, from slight balance problems to the impossibility of walking. SCAs are rare disorders for which a cure is currently unavailable. The European Commission is providing 9.45 million euro for a project aimed at developing a treatment for spinocerebellar ataxias. The Integrated Project, EUROSCA, financed under the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6), gathers 22 European groups from nine countries in a joint effort to develop a European network structure that will lead to the world's largest register of genetically defined patients suffering from SCAs.