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FRIDAY, Dec. 21 (HealthScoutNews) -- Multiple sclerosis (MS), a crippling disease of the central nervous system, could one day be treated with a common antibiotic, a new study suggests. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin, in collaboration with German scientists, found that minocycline helped rats fight off a disease that's the animal equivalent of chronic MS in humans. The drug could decrease the severity of MS symptoms or even prevent relapses, they say. The findings appear in today's issue of the Annals of Neurology. Text Continues Below
"It would either block the disease or lessen the severity of the disease. It protects the central nervous system," says senior author Ian Duncan. One expert finds the results encouraging and exciting, but adds a caveat. "I think we always have to temper our enthusiasm with a certain amount of caution until it's been tested on humans," says Nicholas G. LaRocca, director of health-care delivery and policy research at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Some treatments that have worked in the rat model of MS have been successful in humans, but many have not, he says. Duncan acknowledges that, but he says the rat model is the best available model for MS, and it's used to test most MS drugs before human trials. And he says a human clinical trial already has been scheduled next year at the University of Calgary. "We need to do more work to nail this down" to determine more specifically exactly how minocycline works on the nervous system, Duncan says. MS, which affects more than 300,000 Americans, is characterized by inflammation and the loss of the myelin sheaths that protect the body's nerve fibers. Symptoms include numbness and possible paralysis, as the brain's ability to send signals to the rest of the body is weakened by the progressive destruction of myelin. The disease has no known cause or cure, and the triggers for relapses remain unclear. As the disease moves into its final stages, the sheaths are damaged and nerve fibers are destroyed. Page: 1 | 2 | Next >>
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