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Study Yields New Clues to Stopping MS Progression

July 19, 2019

Collaborating researchers from New York City report that the spinal fluid of people with progressive MS dramatically inhibited the ability of rodent nerve cells isolated in lab dishes to produce energy, while spinal fluid from people with relapsing-remitting MS did not. Further research showed that the spinal fluid from people with progressive MS had increased levels of lipid molecules known as ceramides, and that exposing the nerve cells to ceramides alone similarly impaired their ability to uptake glucose and make energy. This adds important details to growing evidence that nerve cells’ tiny powerplants, called mitochondria, malfunction during the course of progressive MS.

The team plans to validate these findings in larger numbers of people and explore whether the inability of nerve cells to keep up with the demand for energy production drives the loss of nerve cells in MS, and thus MS progression. They also are exploring strategies for stopping this energy malfunction to rescue nerve cells.

This research was supported by the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) and the MS Research Program at the Department of Defense.

Read more from the Advanced Science Research Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY

Read the paper in the journal Brain
 

About Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis is an unpredictable, often disabling disease of the central nervous system. Symptoms range from numbness and tingling to blindness and paralysis, and there is currently no cure for MS. The progress, severity and specific symptoms of MS in any one person cannot yet be predicted, but advances in research and treatment are leading to better understanding and moving us closer to a world free of MS. An estimated 1 million people live with MS in the United States. Most people with MS are diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 50, and it affects women three times more than men.

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