This just in, folks, Multiple Sclerosis is not a neurodegenerative disease.
According to a study at the University of Zurich, scientists have disproven the “neurodegenerative hypothesis”, which was based on observations that certain patients exhibited characteristic myelin damage without a discernible immune attack.
In the popular, but now totally obsolete, hypothesis, scientists assumed that MS-triggering myelin damage occurred without the involvement of the immune system. In that scenario, (which is now known to be erroneous) the immune response against myelin would be the result – and not the cause of – the pathogenic process.
So How Do They Know The Lesions Are Is Not Caused By The Immune System?
Using genetic tricks, they induced myelin defects without alerting the immune defense. This means that MS can occur without the immune system’s help.
“At the beginning of our study, we found myelin damage that strongly resembled the previous observations in MS patients,” explains Burkhard Becher, a professor at the University of Zurich. “However, not once were we able to observe an MS-like autoimmune disease.”
In order to ascertain whether an active immune defense causes the disease based on a combination of an infection and myelin damage, the researchers conducted a variety of further experiments – without success.
“We were unable to detect an MS-like disease – no matter how intensely we stimulated the immune system,” says Ari Waisman, a professor from the University Medical Center Mainz. “We therefore consider the neurodegenerative hypothesis obsolete.”
So what does this mean now?
It means that it’s time to study what part the immune system actually plays in MS. Because right now, it doesn’t look like it’s a cause. It merely looks like a player in the game.