This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

So let's say you are in the antibiotic camp - for infection, not neuro protection. How would one explain that many women with MS feel great during pregnancy? If there is a chronic infection, what happens during pregnancy?

Any guesses? This will come up with my neuro - I know it will, and I haven't thought of or read of a good response.

Thanks - feesher

Hi Feesher

I'm no expert on these matters but I just happened to read your question and then find what might be the answer on the Antegren forum........

Magpie

Well, I was not aware at any time that I had a chronic, low level infection. I got the occasional cold much like everyone, coughed quite a bit in winter, which I put down to the materials used in my profession, nothing more. Having a chronic infection does not necessarily mean that you are permanently aware that something is wrong. I went for years with MS basically so benign I didn't even realise I had it: several years between attacks, then complete recovery. Then I hit my forties, got a second acute infection and things straight away started to unravel: I went within a few months from being able to do a 20 mile plus trek and not even feel tired to not even being able to walk to the post box, a few yards up the road.

Magpie found the reason why many women feel great during pregnancy and I can't argue with that. If the infection does not ordinarily make you aware of its existence, why should it be any different during pregnancy?

Why has chlamydia pneumoniae been only so recently discovered? Because it is so damned hard to find is the reason. Many laboratories are still finding it difficult after 20 years and most neurologists won't even countenance that MS might have an infective cause, as was thought back in the 19th century. Too many years have passed without the infection being isolated. And this isn't the neurologist's job anyway: medicine has become so specialised over the years and there is so much to learn in each speciality that many things are just being missed. There used to be a post in all hospitals called a 'general physician', whose job was basically to link everything together. There used to be one here when my husband took up his post in 1980 at the age of 29. He was very old, he retired not long after and was never replaced. Several years later I left university and developed MS, then C Pn was discovered to be a pathogen but there was nobody to link everything together.................until now.

Sarah

I guess if you subscribe to the "lesions are a sideshow" arguement, and also note that during pregnancy the immune system is down regulated to keep the baby, then one could make the leap and say that the body also "tolerates" the chronic CNS infection. The post-partum relapse, which I believe tends to be a little harsher - could represent pent-up demand for immune system activity within the CNS resulting in a larger cascade (ie relpase, subsequent lesion, etc...)

Love this website, btw

Hmm, I don't think I've ever subscribed to the "lesions as a sideshow" argument: they didn't look much like a sideshow in my MRIs, that's for certain. I also don't think that any sort of leap is needed from pregnancy angst to the body tolerating a mild, low-level, barely noticeable chronic infection. If I did leap though, I landed on both my feet, that's for certain.

Glad you like the site, by the way! The best I've come across by a long way.

Sarah

Sorry if that sounded calous. By sideshow, I mean the line of thinkin that the lesions happen afterwards. For example, following this thread

http://www.thisisms.com/modules.php?nam ... 07&start=0

Where microglia are activated (by infection, virus, other), and that's the start or it all. Read raven's "homebrew" post on page 1.

It corroborates.

Among all the other valid mentions regarding possibilities of why MS seems to remit during pregnancy is (from what I have found), that pregnancy results in the immune system remaining predominantly Th2, and there is a significant rise in IL10, which strengthens the blood-brain barrier, thereby not allowing macrophages and/or APCs to cross the BBB.

Just a thought...........

Deb