MS not an autoimmune disease

If it's on your mind and it has to do with multiple sclerosis in any way, post it here.
User avatar
Arron
Volunteer Moderator
Posts: 902
Joined: Sun Feb 01, 2004 3:00 pm
Location: California, USA

Post by Arron »

Hi OddDuck, welcome to the site. As you've probably noticed, we're very open to exploring all kinds of ideas at This is MS. Please go ahead and send your research to us (either send it to me via Private Message or e-mail us at submissions@thisisms.com) and we'll find the best means for a public review.
User avatar
mscaregiver
Volunteer Moderator
Posts: 148
Joined: Sat Jun 05, 2004 2:00 pm

Post by mscaregiver »

Greetings OddDuck, thanks for the post and I am sure everyone is very excited to read your research and the name of the treatement you have used..

Philip
User avatar
OddDuck
Contributing Author
Posts: 1040
Joined: Sat Jun 19, 2004 2:00 pm
Location: Tennessee

Post by OddDuck »

Thanks!

I'll email it Arron, as he suggested.

Deb
User avatar
OddDuck
Contributing Author
Posts: 1040
Joined: Sat Jun 19, 2004 2:00 pm
Location: Tennessee

Post by OddDuck »

MScaregiver:

I tried to private message my research to you, also, but I'm new to this site, and it appears that the message is simply "sitting" in my "outbox" (?)

How and/or when will it get actually "sent" to you? Did I do something wrong, or is there something further I should have done?

8O :roll:

Deb
User avatar
OddDuck
Contributing Author
Posts: 1040
Joined: Sat Jun 19, 2004 2:00 pm
Location: Tennessee

Post by OddDuck »

Ok! NOW I see how the private messaging works! Duh, Deb!

:lol:

Deb
User avatar
HarryZ
Family Elder
Posts: 2572
Joined: Tue May 25, 2004 2:00 pm
Location: London, ON, Canada
Contact:

Re: MS Therapeutic Theories

Post by HarryZ »

Odd duck,

Welcome to the board.

Your message was very interesting to say the least and I'm sure many other readers are anxious to hear what you have discovered.

I would also like to see the response you got from the NMSS. In most cases, the NMSS won't provide any kind of grant money for MS research unless you are a medical doctor, a PhD researcher or have stipulated a doctor who is willing to conduct the research project.

Look forward to reading your future posts.

Harry
User avatar
OddDuck
Contributing Author
Posts: 1040
Joined: Sat Jun 19, 2004 2:00 pm
Location: Tennessee

Post by OddDuck »

Hi, Harry! Thanks for the welcome.

Yea....I knew you had to be an clinical researcher with a medical background for an actual grant. I was urging the neuro I had at the time (who comes from the Mayo) to apply for a grant with them, but he was already involved in several other clinical trials with pharmaceutical companies, and I think he was already stretched pretty thin. I mainly sent it to the NMSS to see if my compilation of data held weight in their eyes or not.

Apparently, it did. I was hoping that they would pass it on to somebody else (maybe someone who already had been given a recent grant) to look into further. For all I know, they did. Their research panel did review it, and they encouraged me to keep trying to "engage" a neurologist or other researcher.

All in all, they were pretty nice.

Deb
User avatar
Arron
Volunteer Moderator
Posts: 902
Joined: Sun Feb 01, 2004 3:00 pm
Location: California, USA

Post by Arron »

The wait is over! I passed the article on to our news-posting staff and wa-la, it is posted:

http://www.thisisms.com/article-124--0-0.html

VERY interesting and VERY novel-- I would love to have Harry, Philip, Finn, Willy, Shayk and everyone else who has a heart for gory details to take a good, hard look at Deb's work and provide comment.
Last edited by Arron on Sun Jun 20, 2004 9:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
OddDuck
Contributing Author
Posts: 1040
Joined: Sat Jun 19, 2004 2:00 pm
Location: Tennessee

Post by OddDuck »

Arron,

Hey....that's terrific!! I'm so tickled!

Uh....I hate to say this, but my nickname on here is "OddDuck", not "Oddball"...I'm DYING laughing! No need to change it, because I can relate to THAT nickname, too! hahahahhahahahaha

:wink:

Deb
User avatar
Arron
Volunteer Moderator
Posts: 902
Joined: Sun Feb 01, 2004 3:00 pm
Location: California, USA

Post by Arron »

I'm dying from laughter too... I'd love to say that we meant to do that, but we dropped the ball on that one. I had them fix it.
:lol:

fun while it lasted!
User avatar
HarryZ
Family Elder
Posts: 2572
Joined: Tue May 25, 2004 2:00 pm
Location: London, ON, Canada
Contact:

Post by HarryZ »

Arron,
Arron wrote:VERY interesting and VERY novel-- I would love to have Harry, Philip, Finn, Shayk and everyone else who has a heart for gory details to take a good, hard look at Deb's work and provide comment.
This indeed is quite an interesting article. The technical info is certainly above my level of understanding but I have already sent the article to one of my MS contacts who will be able to understand what this is all about.....and give an unbiased response to the theory.

I'll let everyone know what kind of info I get back.

Harry
User avatar
willysnout1
Family Elder
Posts: 125
Joined: Sun May 23, 2004 2:00 pm

Post by willysnout1 »

There is another thread on the General Discussion board about desipramine, and I have posted my thoughts there.
User avatar
Shayk
Family Elder
Posts: 786
Joined: Fri Feb 06, 2004 3:00 pm
Contact:

Back to MS Not Auto Immune Discussion

Post by Shayk »

I'm swooping in for a quick reality check on some MS and Gender research I've come across. I'm personally able “on first glance” to easily interpret some findings as being totally consistent with the notion that MS may not be an auto immune disease. Since it’s so obvious to me I’m afraid I’m missing something. Hence, I’m curious to know how others interpret the same info, i.e., consistent or inconsistent with the notion MS is not an auto immune disease.

First, my most basic understanding of the Australian research suggesting MS may not be auto immune is that some brain cells die before the inflammation starts. I also have the impression that it is the damage to and loss (death) of nerve fibers that causes permanent damage in people with MS.

Now, two findings from the NMSS site link "Gender Gap Reaches Brain Cells" (Sorry folks, I haven't a clue how to do those hot links)

First study findings:
A recent study using MRI brain scans in over 400 men and women with MS....suggests that women show greater MRI signs of inflammation (lesions that often resolve and are not necessarily permanent) than men, while men show less inflammation but more indications of permanent tissue damage than women.
Interpretation and Questions: Women with MS tend to generally have less severe symptoms than men. This study found women have more MRI signs of inflammation but less signs of permanent damage. Isn’t that exactly what a not auto-immune theory might predict? i.e., If the inflammation came first and was the primary contributor to cell death causing damage (current auto-immune theory), women would be expected to exhibit more rather than fewer areas of permanent damage on MRI since they have more inflammation. That’s not what the study found. The study found fewer areas of permanent damage and more inflammation.

Men with MS tend to generally have more severe symptoms than women. This study found men showed more signs of permanent damage and less inflammation. Again, isn’t that exactly what a not auto immune theory might predict? i.e., If the inflammation came first and was the primary contributor to cell death causing damage (current auto-immune theory), men would be expected to exhibit more rather than fewer areas of inflammation resulting in more permanent damage seen on MRI. That’s not what the study found. The study found less inflammation and more permanent damage.

Second study:
...preliminary findings that males have more myelin-making cells, and thicker myelin, than females, while female brains appear to produce myelin-making cells that die at a higher rate, and their myelin appears to degrade faster
Interpretation and Questions: Again, if brain cells die first and then there’s inflammation, (i.e. not auto-immune) aren’t these exactly the type of findings you might expect to be different in men and women?

That is, if the inflammation came first (auto-immune), wouldn’t you expect women, with thinner myelin, whose cells die at a higher rate and degrades faster, to exhibit more permanent damage than men on MRI and to generally have more severe symptoms?

And, if the inflammation came first (auto-immune), wouldn’t you expect men, with thicker myelin and more myelin making cells, to exhibit less permanent damage on MRI (thicker myelin protecting men’s nerve fibers from death as a result of the inflammation first and then nerve fiber loss) than women and to have generally less severe symptoms than women?

Now, I know I have gone in circles :lol: with this chicken and egg thing and these two findings for way too long. I would like to hear what others think, do these two MS and Gender findings tend to be consistent with the idea MS is not-auto immune or not? What am I missing?

(BTW, I haven’t read the actual study reports for either one of these :roll: , so won’t be able to answer questions about them.)

Thanks everyone for your patience with my learning curve.

Sharon
User avatar
OddDuck
Contributing Author
Posts: 1040
Joined: Sat Jun 19, 2004 2:00 pm
Location: Tennessee

Post by OddDuck »

Sharon,

I gotta admit, that one even took ME a while! :lol:

You make a good point, though. And something else I've found lately is they have found axonal damage sometimes BEFORE the myelin was ever broken down. (Did you just say that? Duh, Deb!)

Another question I had, (and maybe this was part of what you've been uncovering with what you found), what forms of MS are they referring to exactly? It sounds to me like they might be saying that men are more likely to have progressive forms of MS, whereas women more often have relapsing/remitting forms? (I'm not sure where I'm going with this, exactly......I'm just throwing out there whatever is coming to my mind first here.) How would remyelination work into this, I wonder?

Are women somehow more capable (for lack of a better word right now - it's early) of remyelination somehow? But then again, if axonal damage IS happening without myelin degradation in the first place, how would that even apply to the equation, huh?

This all just brings me back somehow to Dr. Lucchinetti's theory of totally separate and distinct patterns of MS, arising from different pathogeneses in the first place.

Something tells me that all of the research that has been done on MS so far, is for the most part on the right track; it's just that maybe they are trying to fit the wrong pegs in the wrong holes. (?) Especially if there are separate "forms" of MS (like on a previous post, someone mentioned that "umbrella" theory).

Here's where I stand. I think the auto-immune theory fits in there for a couple of types of MS, and reducing inflammation assists in MS; but in my research of all this, I still keep getting led closer and closer to a genetic component that might be the true "trigger" of it all.

This might sound odd, but you know how I describe it? It's like the timing chain on a car (especially the older models, before computerization. I'm showing my age here). If the timing of a vehicle gets off by just a HAIR, even, that will make the whole car and just about every doggoned component of the car spit and sputter, break down, all kinds of different stuff. You can try to adjust the carburator, replace parts, put in dry gas, but nope....still won't run right....and on and on. (If you correct the "timing" of when all those processes are supposed to happen, suddenly the car purrs like a kitten.)

And to me, the timing chain of the body would seem to be genetically related...........wouldn't it?

Deb
User avatar
finn
Contributing Author
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Mar 17, 2004 3:00 pm
Location: Finland
Contact:

Post by finn »

Sorry, time to leave the board.

-finn
Last edited by finn on Sun Aug 28, 2005 7:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
Post Reply
  • Similar Topics
    Replies
    Views
    Last post

Return to “General Discussion”