It seems what was once a piece of useless trivia may become very interesting with respect to multiple sclerosis. Working off the idea that tryptophan may be a powerful immune modulator, new research, from scientists in Germany and California has shown a successful reversal of paralysis in mice afflicted with the laboratory model of Multiple Sclerosis (known as EAE) by dosing the mice with a synthetic version of tryptophan.

The tryptophan synthetic was administered at the onset of paralysis that develops in the animals legs. Compared to placebo animals, the treated mice retained the ability to walk and had fewer and less severe relapses. Furthermore, their immune systems showed a reduction of inflammatory cells considered detrimental to multiple sclerosis patients. Even more intriguing-- when blood was transfused from a treated mouse to a placebo mouse, the recipient actually improved-- implying the change induced by the treatment might be causing the creation of immune cells that target the errant cells responsible for multiple sclerosis inflammation.

The synthetic drug is called tranilast, and is actually used in Japan to treat certain allergy conditions, as well as in various clinical trials worldwide. Certainly the research on mice does not yet indicate that multiple sclerosis patients would benefit from consuming tryptophan or its synthetic derivatives, but it does confirm this relatively common amino acid's role in mediating the immune system and inspires the evaluation of a potentially straightforward treatment strategy.

As with all animal trials, confirmation of efficacy, and most importantly, safety, needs to be established as a next logical step in the treatment's development strategy.

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So is coffee dangerous for people with MS? Not very likely (for one, the inflammatory markers they studied here for heart disease may have absolutely nothing to do with inflammation in the CNS), but it could possibly be a small provocation...

"Consuming moderate-to-high amounts of coffee is associated with increased levels of several inflammatory markers, a finding that could help explain previous reports linking the beverage to heart disease...

Compared with subjects who did not drink coffee, those who consumed more than about 1 cup of the beverage per day had significantly higher levels of all the inflammatory markers tested..."

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"OBJECTIVE: We wanted to measure immunoglobulin A (IgA) antibodies to some common food antigens in MS and also IgG against gliadin and gluten...

CONCLUSIONS: The data presented indicate that there may be a possible moderately increased uptake of some specific proteins from the gut in MS compared with controls."

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