On Wednesday 11th September, we will be running another Burning Debate at ECTRIMS 2019 in Stockholm. We want MS clinicians and researchers to use social media (specifically Twitter) that can include people affected by MS in discussions and debates about MS research and treatments. The topic this year is: It is inappropriate to prescribe interferon-beta and glatiramer acetate for active...
The central vein sign in MS
Multiple Sclerosis (From Reich et al NEJM 2018) Last week, I blogged on smoldering lesions visualized on MRI as a marker of progressive MS. Today, I will discuss the central vein sign. This publication in JAMA by the MAGNIMS group (a group of MRI bods from the world over) is therefore, timely. If you haven’t heard of the central vein sign, it is the presence of a vein within an MS lesion...
Octopus as the new MS Tool?
Sorry for the quick post but off for a break and no time to post today, maybe ProfG can fill in. So what have I picked for a 5 minute post When an octopus has MS: Application of neurophysiology and immunology of octopuses for multiple sclerosis. Naser Moghadasi A. Med Hypotheses. 2019 Oct;131:109297. doi: 10.1016/j. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an immune-mediated disease which can cause different...
Google Hangout on the way Want do you want us to report on
Cytomegalovirus primary infection in a patient with multiple sclerosis treated with alemtuzumab. Aguirre C, Meca-Lallana V, Sánchez P, Vivancos J.M ult Scler Relat Disord. 2019;5:270-271. This comes as no relevation to anyone. One person I know who had alemtuzumab described themselves as “fungus mungus” because of the infections that can occur when you have no T or B cells...
Blocking synapse formation, Blocking repair
Interleukin-6 Disrupts Synaptic Plasticity and Impairs Tissue Damage Compensation in Multiple Sclerosis. Stampanoni Bassi M, Iezzi E, Mori F, Simonelli I, Gilio L, Buttari F, Sica F, De Paolis N, Mandolesi G, Musella A, De Vito F, Dolcetti E, Bruno A, Furlan R, Finardi A, Marfia GA, Centonze D, Rizzo FR.Neurorehabil Neural Repair. 2019 Aug 20:1545968319868713 Background: Synaptic...
B cells and the Boob Part II
So I have taken a bit of a kicking, as I rightly did not comment on the long-term experience with rituximab in non-MS conditions and cancer is not a particular problem, so I do not want to scare you. However I can go back to ocrelizumab and give you thier take and the risks of cancer are small and that is the case for Breast cancer too. As you can see in many ways the risks are no different from...
B cells and the Boob
If you rememeber one of the potential side effects of cladribine was thought to be cancer. We looked at this and the occurrance of cancer was not really more than the effect of life. Two years in a trial is rather short to assess the cancr risk.This will show itself with time. However removing large parts of your immune system is going to increase the risk..Never the less, this European-derived...
Chronic lesion activity in MS as seen on MRI
If you’d asked an year ago on whether I though MRI had a role beyond diagnosis in MS? My answer would have been an emphatic ‘NO’. The Achilles heel of MRI has always been the difficulty of standardizing scanning techniques to a large scale population level and adapting these accurately to work seamlessly during the day-to-day shortcomings of clinical imaging facilities within...
Guest post: Multiple Sclerosis from a researcher’s perspective
Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is an incurable neurological disorder that is characterized by the loss of specialized functional cells in our brain. Oligodendrocytes are one of these specialized cell types that play an important role in MS. They produce a fatty substance called myelin, which is produced in large sheaths that are tightly wrapped around our nerve cells. Myelin is essential for providing...
astrocyte
Astrocytes (star-shapped cells that) are an often overlooked cells in the CNS. Here they are depleted and disease gets worse Inflammation and Demyelination in a Murine Animal Model of Multiple Sclerosis. Allnoch L, Baumgärtner W, Hansmann F.Int J Mol Sci. 2019;20(16). pii: E3922. So lets get promote them?……. but maybe not Neurotoxic potential (Nerve damaging) of reactive...