Interesting Article

January 5, 2011

Saw this posted elsewhere and thought it was interesting enough to pass on. I

don't know wnaymore than what is written below:

Experiment brings hope for new multiple sclerosis treatment

Japanese and Swiss researchers have shed light on what causes multiple sclerosis

(MS) symptoms to worsen, and succeeded in developing a medicine that alleviates

MS symptoms in mice.

The researchers expect their findings to assist in the development of new

medications for the disease.

MS causes inflammation in the spinal cord and nerves in the brain such as the

optic nerve. The symptoms include impaired vision and difficulty walking. In

Japan, there are over 12,000 people with the disease, and around 80 percent of

them are only in their 20s to 40s. If symptoms worsen, patients can end up blind

or bed-ridden. The cause of MS is unknown, and most treatment is limited to

fighting symptoms -- using steroids that reduce inflammation or drugs that

suppress the immune system.

The symptoms of MS occur when the myelin sheaths that cover the optic nerve and

axons in the spinal cord are damaged by inflammation, causing the electric

signals that transmit information through the nervous system to leak and not be

transmitted effectively.

Dr. Takayuki Harada and Dr. Xiaoli Guo from the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute for

Neuroscience and others involved with the research set their sights on ASK1.

ASK1 is a gene that works in glial cells, which support the cranial nerves, and

controls the innate immune system that organisms are born with. The researchers

theorized that on appearance of MS symptoms, ASK1 is overly activated, leading

to the secretion of large amounts of protein that cause inflammation.

When the researchers artificially induced MS-like symptoms in mice that had

their ASK1 genes removed, the symptoms, such as lower-body paralysis, did not

worsen and the mice were able to continue walking. The myelin sheaths around the

mice's axons were barely damaged.

The researchers also developed a drug that impedes the activity of ASK1. After

administering the drug daily to the mice with MS-like symptoms, the mice's

conditions improved.

The ASK1 gene exists in humans as well. " If a new medicine like the ASK1

inhibitor can be developed for humans, it will become easy to inhibit

inflammation of the central nerves, " says Harada.

The research was published in the European Molecular Biology Organization's

scientific journal, the EMBO Journal.

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