Research advances

Press, 13 March 1987, Page 9

Research advances

Multiple sclerosis still defies the efforts of scientists around the world to establish its cause and cure, but much is happening in the research field, and scientists are confident that it will lead to the conquest of this crippling disease.

New Zealand researchers are playing their part in this worldwide attack on the disease. The disease is characterised by destruction of the myelin sheath — an insulating covering of fatty tissue that is manufactured by specific cells in the brain.

This myelin wraps itself around nerve fibres in the brain and spinal cord. A healthy myelin covering aids in the conduction of mesages to and from the brain going to and from all parts of the body. With multiple sclerosis the myelin sheath becomes inflamed and destroyed. Scars form in the damaged places and when this happens, messages travelling to and from the brain can be distorted, misdirected or lost entirely as they go by these scars.

Most scientists now believe that multiple sclerosis is an auto-immune disorder, which means that the body’s immune system goes haywire — instead of attacking foreign invaders or perhaps after attacking foreign invaders, it turns on its own tissue — in the case of multiple sclerosis, the myelin that wraps around nerve fibres in the brain and spinal cord.

A lot of research activity is devoted to this abnormal immune response and ways to turn it off.

Other researchers are

searching for the antigen that may cause this abnormal response. For years, some scientists have believed that the response may be triggered by a persistent virus that hides in the body for years.

It is now known that those who have multiple sclerosis exhibit a definite abnormality of immune system regulation. A group of scientists working under the auspices of the multiple sclerosis society at the University of Chicago recently discovered that a specific cell in the immune system which disappears during an multiple sclerosis attack, and the brain cell that manufactures myelin have a common surface component. This is a major advance and will give scientists a new avenue by which they may come to better understand the disease process.

The possible role of lymphocytes in multiple sclerosis is being better and better understood. Scientists have recently discovered that certain lymphocytes called suppressor T-cells, which suppress an immune reaction, disappear from the blood of an multiple sclerosis patient right before an attack, and then return to normal levels when there is a remission.

It is thought that their absence may be opening the way to an auto-im-mune attack on the myelin of other lymphocytes. Virology is another area of multiple sclerosis research that has come into considerable prominence in recent years.

A proportion of the pro-

ceeds from the multiple sclerosis national appeal will be devoted to funding research into the disease. The remainder will be devoted to providing better patient services.