MS - Emerging Information

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http://www.msnbc.com/news/308073.asp?cp1=1

Bacterium tied to multiple sclerosis

Healthy Adam: Find hints that antibiotics could help arrest MS

Montel , shown receiving an Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show Host in

May, revealed in August that he has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

By Segell

MSNBC

Sept. 17 — You’re an athlete, a weekend warrior with the competitive

instincts of Latrell Sprewell or Brett Favre, only half as talented and

almost twice as old. Which means you get banged up plenty. Often your

injuries produce numbness or tingling — in your forearms, for instance — and

the problem may linger for weeks. Then you start to wonder: could you be

suffering from something more serious than a sports injury?

The challenge is to determine whether the bacterium is the cause of MS in

certain susceptible people or whether it simply exploits an already

diminished immune system in people who already have MS.

THAT QUESTION circled in the back of talk-show host Montel

’ head for years — in fact, every time he experienced debilitating pain in

his feet and legs. Recently, worst fears were confirmed: He wasn’t

suffering from aging-athlete syndrome, but from multiple sclerosis.

MS is a chronic, often disabling disease of the central nervous

system. The disorder is characterized by destruction of myelin, a substance

that insulates nerve fibers of the brain and spinal cord and speeds

electrical signaling through the fibers.

Most people with MS are diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 40, but

there the similarities among patients end. The progress, severity and

specific symptoms of MS vary widely. One patient may experience occasional

numbness over two decades, while another may quickly become paralyzed and

lose his vision. Some patients experience MS in cycles of relapse and

remission, while others progress to severe debility and die from the

disease.

Around the time was going public with the agony he has

suffered privately for so long, MS researchers had some promising news to

announce.

Pathologists at Vanderbilt School of Medicine in Nashville reported

in a recent ls of Neurology that a common bacterium may be responsible

for the disease.

ENTER CHLAMYDIA PNEUMONIAE

In a recent study, they found all the MS patients they analyzed

contained evidence of infection, either past or present, with the bacterium

Chlamydia pneumoniae, the cause of what’s commonly known as “walking”

pneumonia.

Although the cause of the disease has not been identified,

researchers classify MS as an autoimmune disorder — one in which the body’s

immune system attacks and destroys healthy body tissue, or, in the case of

MS, the myelin sheath. A number of studies have suggested that an

environmental agent or infectious agent, such as a virus, may trigger the

process that corrupts the immune system. But attempts to isolate such an

organism have failed.

Healthy Eve: Viruses may hold MS clues

The Vanderbilt pathologists, Dr. Stratton and Dr.

, suspected that C. pneumoniae may be the culprit. Their interest

was piqued by a report of abnormalities in the brain scans of patients whose

blood showed high levels of antibody to the bacterium. The abnormalities

were similar to those seen in MS patients.

REMISSION AND RELAPSE CYCLES

The two pathologists then enlisted the help of Dr. Subramaniam

Sriram, a Vanderbilt neurologist who noted that the chlamydia bacteria were

responsible for other chronic diseases with cycles of remission and

relapse — a common course of MS. The researchers found a patient with both

an acute C. pneumoniae infection and rapidly progressing MS. When the

patient’s MS was dramatically arrested by antibiotics that fight the

bacterium, they began looking for C. pneumoniae in other patients.

Therapy may counter severe MS attacks

They ended up finding evidence of the organism in the spinal fluid of

all 37 MS patients they examined. The bacterium itself was evident in about

two-thirds of the patients (compared to only 11 percent in a control group).

The remaining one-third contained evidence that the immune system had

manufactured antibodies to C. pneumoniae (compared to only a few control

subjects).

The group’s findings are certainly as dramatic and promising as any

to emerge from MS research, but the researchers urge caution.

The challenge, they say, is to determine whether the bacterium is the

cause of MS in certain susceptible people or whether it simply exploits an

already diminished immune system and infects people who already have MS. If

it turns out MS is an infectious disease, appropriate therapies to treat it

will follow.

More importantly, there’s a good chance of developing a vaccine that

would eradicate it altogether.

Segell is the author of “Standup Guy: Masculinity That

Works,” published by Villard.