[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Page 15804]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        DYSTONIA AWARENESS WEEK

  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity 
to call to the attention of my colleagues that the week of June 3 to 10 
was Dystonia Awareness Week. The Dystonia Advocacy Coalition, through 
the commemoration of this week and a number of other outreach 
activities, sought to raise awareness of dystonia, a neurological 
disorder.
  Dystonia is a movement disorder that causes the muscles to contract 
and spasm involuntarily. There is presently no cure, and although 
remarkable progress has been made in unraveling the causes and 
mechanisms of dystonia, the availability of effective treatments is 
limited. Approximately 50 percent of patients with dystonia have a 
genetically inherited form while the other half suffers from dystonia 
as a result of birth injury, physical trauma, exposure to certain 
medications, surgery, or stroke. Estimates suggest dystonia affects at 
least 300,000 people in North America.
  Given the prevalence and limited treatment options for this disorder, 
I call on my colleagues to increase support for the National Institutes 
of Health, which funds dystonia research through the National Institute 
of Neurologic Disorders and Stroke, NINDS, the National Institute on 
Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, NIDCD, and the National Eye 
Institute, NEI.
  I have consistently supported increases in NIH funding in the past 
and recently signed onto a letter asking for a 6.7 percent increase in 
NIH funding for the fiscal year 2008 appropriations bill. The lack of 
treatment options and a cure for serious conditions like dystonia 
underscores the overall need to support basic science and translational 
research that allows for the transfer of discoveries from the 
laboratory bench to actual medical treatments. I am continuing to 
develop legislation to enhance our Federal translational research 
efforts. I believe we can and must bring new treatments for diseases 
such as dystonia to the public faster than ever.

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