85) How's your hypothalamic health? (Part 2)

Following up from the last post, I have always known that Sasha sustained significant hypothalamic damage as evidenced by his many functional impairments; it had never been confirmed by any radiology reports, however.  Recently, Sasha's hypothalamic damage was brought to light after Dr. Christian Roth reached out and offered to evaluate Sasha's post-operative MRI scans using his semi-quantitative scoring system: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5029599/

Curious to see what it would reveal, I readily agreed and sent him a couple of scans to evaluate. Not surprisingly, the evaluation and "score" of his two MRIs indicated that he had very high risk of HO (in one scan, he scored a "6" and in the other scan, he had a "7" with "7" corresponding to the highest risk for having HO). As reported by Dr. Roth, "damage includes the anterior medial and posterior hypothalamus, and also mammillary bodies, and also the floor of the third ventricle. His ventricles also look enlarged." Although getting a score as severe as Sasha's is not exactly good news, it IS good news that Sasha has somehow been able to lose weight, maintain it, improve his overall metabolic health, and reduce his hyperphagia behaviors in spite of it all. Although he is just a single case example, it provides some compelling evidence that our experimental treatment with oxytocin (and naltrexone) gives hope to those with even the highest HO risk.

It is also my hope that researchers investigate the effectiveness of OT at varying doses (by itself and in combination with naltrexone) for people with HO.  It would also be interesting to see if and how OT treatment works on HO sufferers with and without hyperphagia. 

What if someday all survivors with posterior pituitary and hypothalamic lesions could have their MRI scans evaluated and scored to assess their HO risks? And what if, one day, that assessment would simply get them directed to an evidence-based treatment? Maybe it might even be oxytocin?