A New Discovery Could Provide a Treatment for Multiple Sclerosis
By William Huang
One day, you wake up and something is not normal. Your vision isn’t clear, and you have trouble staying balanced. You can’t feel parts of your body. When you see a doctor, he dismisses it as a pinched nerve and recommends you to see a chiropractor. But that care didn’t help. The condition continues to get worse and your left leg and arm require lots of concentration. You can’t work. Numbness and tingling make cooking and cleaning difficult. You are suffering from multiple sclerosis.
Multiple sclerosis is a chronic disease affecting the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord). Multiple sclerosis occurs when the immune system attacks nerve fibers and myelin sheathing (a fatty substance which surrounds/insulates healthy nerve fibers) in the brain and spinal cord. This causes inflammation, which destroys nerve cell processes and myelin – altering electrical messages in the brain. It is unpredictable and affects each patient differently – some individuals may be mildly affected, while others may lose their ability to write, speak or walk.
Today multiple sclerosis (MS) is not a curable disease. Effective strategies can help modify or slow the disease course, treat
relapses (also called attacks or exacerbations), manage symptoms, improve function and safety, and address emotional health. More often, you are referred by your MS physician to other specialists in the community. In either case, the goal is a comprehensive, coordinated care to manage the disease and promote comfort
However, a recent study may pave the way to find the cause behind the mysterious diseases. This could unveil new avenues to treat the disease. Studies found the Epstein-Barr virus as responsible as it instigates multiple sclerosis when the central nervous system gets caught in the cross hairs of an immune response to the virus’s attack. This recognition opens new options for treatment, or even vaccines. Targeting the Epstein-Barr virus specifically or cells where the virus is living in could prevent the disease from progressing too far.
The virus was discovered in 1964 and infects an estimated 90 percent of people around the world. People infected as young children might have a mild cold or show no symptoms. Teenagers or young adults may experience a bout of debilitating fatigue called infectious or mono that can last weeks or months. Although these symptoms eventually fade, Epstein-Barr infections hang on. The virus belongs to the herpesvirus family — a group known for instigating lifelong infections. For example, varicella-zoster virus, which causes chicken pox, goes latent inside nerve cells but can resurface to
cause shingles.
With this discovery, it is possible to develop targeted treatments. For example, therapies that attack the virus. However, scientists suspect that the disease may already be in a stage that is too late. Therefore, scientists believe that vaccines could be the best option as they provide a defense before the virus invades. In fact, Moderna, one of the manufacturers of the COVID vaccine, is currently in production to create the vaccine to spark a strong immune response and get a sense for whether it might curb cases of mono.
Although it may take time to find the effectiveness of these vaccines, scientists are hopeful that the combination of therapeutics and further investigation in the Epstein-Barr virus could provide an effective therapy against the disease in the future.
Citations:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/multiple-sclerosis/symptoms-causes/syc-20350269
Image Credit:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/multiple-sclerosis-epstein-barr-virus-vaccines-treatments
