Red Wine Molecule Might Battle MS

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The higher dose reduced brain lesions by about 50 percent, Comi said. The people who got it also had a 30 percent reduction in MS flare-ups, which can cause vision loss and lack of coordination severe enough to prevent someone from walking, he said.

There will be a larger study that will recruit more than 1,000 people with MS and will last for two years, Comi said. If all goes well, it could be available for clinical use in three years.

A great advantage of the drug is that it can be taken by mouth, Comi said. "All the available therapies are injectable," he said. "Can you imagine how large an advantage this therapy would be?"

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Another noninjectable drug that probably is already being overused against MS has shown promise in an animal study, researchers at Pennsylvania State University reported at the same meeting. It is naltrexone, developed for treatment of drug abuse.

"Thousands of people are taking this drug for MS on the basis of what other people have said," said Dr. Ian S. Zagon, distinguished university professor in neural and behavioral sciences at Penn State. "So, we decided to do animal studies about its efficacy."

The study of animals with an MS-like condition found that low-dose naltrexone helped, but high doses worsened the disease, Zagon said. Penn State is organizing a human trial of low-dose naltrexone in MS, he said. Meanwhile, use of the drug for the condition is not recommended, Zagon said.

More information

Learn about MS from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

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