Promising New Multiple Sclerosis Treatment Under Development

Recently Professor Linda Watkins, researcher Lisa Loran, and colleagues from the University of Colorado at Boulder have been researching drugs that may be able to treat and even reverse the harm that multiple sclerosis causes. MS is an inflammatory disease that occurs when the myelin sheath of the spinal cord and brain are damaged by the body’s immune system. Over time, lesions, or scarring, occur and this results in permanent neurological problems. The researcher are experimenting with an anti-inflammatory drug called ATL313, which was originally developed to treat chronic pain, but now shows that it can pause the effects of MS induced paralysis for weeks. The problem with MS medication now is that it can reduce the progression of MS or even stop it, but it cannot cure it and return the patients back to normal health because the lesions cannot heal. The hope for the ATL313 injections is that they will be able to treat and heal those lesions. The drug was first intended to treat chronic pain for MS patients because the glial cells in their spinal cords are activated by pro-inflammatory responses, and are also pain enhancers that work by exciting neurons that transmit pain signals, which causes the chronic pain. The hope is that the ATL313 injections will calm the glial cells to an anti-inflammatory state that could heal MS scarring.

I found this article very interesting because it is cutting edge research that could help hundreds of thousands of people who suffer from MS. I know people who have this disease, and I can see the way MS impedes their everyday lives, and how much money they pay for their medications that really don’t reverse this disease, but only slow it down.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101118131017.htm