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Kate Devlin
Telegraph
27 Feb 2010
New research suggests that a bacterial or viral infection could cause the immune system to overreact, triggering the condition.
(vactruth.com editor’s note: For those of you wondering where a bacterial or viral infection could originate, consider that one of the side effects of the MMR vaccine is an infection causing inflammation and sclerosing.
http://www.merck.com/product/usa/pi_circulars/m/mmr_ii/mmr_ii_pi.pdf
Encephalitis; encephalopathy; measles inclusion body encephalitis (MIBE) (see CONTRAINDICATIONS); subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE); Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS); febrile convulsions; afebrile convulsions or seizures; ataxia; polyneuritis; polyneuropathy; ocular palsies;
paresthesia.
Primary and acquired immunodeficiency states, including patients who are immunosuppressed in association with AIDS or other clinical manifestations of infection with human immunodeficiency viruses; cellular immune deficiencies; and hypogammaglobulinemic and dysgammaglobulinemic states. Measles inclusion body encephalitis 60 (MIBE), pneumonitis61 and death as a direct consequence of disseminated measles vaccine virus infection have been reported in immunocompromised individuals inadvertently vaccinated with measles-containing vaccine.)
If this proves to be the case, then a vaccine could be developed to prevent the response, and potentially the development of the condition, the researchers behind the breakthrough believe.
Doctors have previously struggled to understand what causes the condition, thought to affect around 100,000 people in Britain.
Sufferers experience difficulty walking or speaking and there is currently no known cure for the disease.
MS is caused by the destruction of myelin, a fatty protective sheath surrounding the body’s central nervous system.
Previous studies have shown that some people are genetically predisposed to developing MS.
The new research suggests that in these people the body’s own defences then go on to destroy their myelin.
Tests on mice showed that exposure to a bacterial infection which has been modified to have the same appearance as myelin caused immune cells to enter the central nervous system, previously impenetrable to them, to destroy it.
Francesco Ria, from the Catholic University of Rome, who led the study, said that there was much more research to be done to understand the exact development of the disease.
However, he added: “We could even imagine (developing) a vaccine by which we could prevent the immune response associated with multiple sclerosis”.
The findings are published in the Journal of Immunology.