Creatine

Creatine monohydrate is a nutritional supplement that has long been used by bodybuilders and athletes for performance enhancement and is something I've been considering for a while as a possible intervention for PWS because it not only improves muscle function but also brain function. Creatine plays an important role in mitochondrial function, so the recent revelations about mitochondrial impairment in PWS have moved it towards the top of my research priority list. There have been some small trials of its use for mitochondrial disorders that present with encephalopathy and myopathy such as Kearns-Sayre syndrome and MELAS (mitochondrial myopathy, encephalopathy, lactic acidosis, and stroke-like episodes), with some reporting benefit and some finding no benefit.

The BBC has an August 2003 article about creatine for general readership - Creatine 'boosts brain power' http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3145223.stm

Here is an excellent, more detailed article for general readership - http://www.scq.ubc.ca/?p=194

For those interested in directly accessing the research, this link will provide a gateway - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Search