This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

It will be interesting to see if they can translate this research into a treatment to test.



Biliverdin reductase, a major physiologic cytoprotectant, suppresses experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis.

Free Radic Biol Med. 2006 Mar 15;40(6):960-7. Epub 2005 Oct 17.
Liu Y, Liu J, Tetzlaff W, Paty DW, Cynader MS.
Brain Research Center, University of British Columbia, 2211 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 2B5.

Oxidative stress plays an important role in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis and its animal model, experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). Bilirubin is regarded today as a potent antioxidant. Recent studies show that the potent antioxidant actions of bilirubin reflect an amplification mechanism whereby biliverdin reductase (BVR) physiologically regenerates bilirubin in a catalytic cycle.

We hypothesized that BVR might prove to be a new effective target for the treatment of free radical-mediated diseases. In this study, we demonstrated that treatment with BVR ameliorated both clinical and pathological signs of EAE more efficiently than treatments with traditional antioxidant enzymes.

In vitro, interference with cellular BVR activity by siRNA elicited greater increases in reactive oxygen species and cell death than interference with the activities of other antioxidant enzymes. Further studies showed that BVR surpasses other enzymes by the multifactorial functions of its only end product, bilirubin, including anti-complement activity, and an activity that inhibits antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity of lymphocytes.

Since BVR regenerates bilirubin in a redox cycle without significantly increasing the concentration of bilirubin, our results suggest that BVR may represent a novel strategy for the treatment of multiple sclerosis and other oxidative stress-mediated diseases.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... med_DocSum



Bilirubin as a potent antioxidant suppresses experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis: implications for the role of oxidative stress in the development of multiple sclerosis.

J Neuroimmunol. 2003 Jun;139(1-2):27-35.
Liu Y, Zhu B, Wang X, Luo L, Li P, Paty DW, Cynader MS.
Brain Research Center, University of British Columbia, 2211 Wesbrook Mall, V6T 2B5, Vancouver, BC, Canada. yingru@interchange.ubc.ca

Increasing evidence shows that oxidative stress plays an important role in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis (MS) and its animal model, experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). In recent years, bilirubin has been demonstrated to be a potent antioxidant in vitro.

In this study, we administered bilirubin to rats with acute and chronic EAE. Bilirubin prevented both acute and chronic EAE effectively. More significantly, bilirubin suppressed ongoing clinical EAE and halted EAE progression when given after disease onset. Subsequent histological examination showed that if administered to rats before the onset of EAE, bilirubin interfered with the invasion of inflammatory cells into the central nervous system (CNS) because it protected the blood-brain barrier (BBB) from free radical-induced permeability changes. However, in some cases, inflammation still occurred even when no clinical illness was observed.

In rats with treatment initiated after the onset of EAE, despite the clinical improvements, treatment with bilirubin did not reduce the degree of CNS inflammation, or change cytokine expression in CNS lesions, indicating a lack of immunosuppressive effect of this treatment. By contrast, bilirubin treatment significantly alleviated oxidative damage in the spinal cord, and the clinical signs of EAE correlated well with the degree of oxidative injury in the lesions.

Our results suggest that free radicals play an important role in the final effector stages of EAE, and that antioxidant therapies may have potential for the treatment of MS.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... med_DocSum