Breakthrough in Treating MS in Mice

    Multiple sclerosis is a degenerative nervous system disorder where the protective sheath that surrounds nerves, called myelin, is damaged, interfering with the nerves’ abilities to send message back and forth along the nervous system. Regenerating the myelin sheath would seem to be the obvious way to treat MS and similar illnesses, but the problem is that cells in the nervous system are particularly resistant to regeneration.

    Thanks to animal experiments there has been a lot of progress made in recent years in understanding why cells in the nervous system don’t regenerate along with progress on spurring them to regenerate. In the latest advance, researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, discovered antibodies which prod the immune systems of mice to repair the myelin sheath. The antibody attaches itself to nerve cells called oligodendrocytes which are responsible for the manufacture of myelin.

    Researchers infected mice with a virus that attacks the myelin sheath and causes symptoms in mice similar to MS in human beings. When the antibody was then injected into the mice, the damage to the myelin sheat was reversed.

    This does not mean, however, that a treatment for MS is right around the corner. This intriguing finding does, however, up open up many avenues for future research. In the real world of science, as opposed to the straw man posited by animal rights activists, important advances in understanding human physiology and disease first require years and decades of basic research aimed at understanding and explaining activities and functions that still mystify scientists. This is but one in a long series of experiments that bring us closer to the day when a viable cure for MS might be found.

Source:

Scientists reverse MS in mice. The BBC, June 5, 2000.

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