This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

Btw, I have decided to quit using smileys and give people an opportunity to interpret my posts just the way they want. I'd like to serve my humour dry.

I'd suggest that our disease could always be called "progressive MS", a slowly progressive neurodegenerative process followed by demyelination. (thought you snuck that one by me eh?) When there is inflammation present in our CNS, the progression of neurodegeneration (and permanent disability) is slower, and the disease can be called RRMS (or SPMS).

So.....you are going to add another diamond and “simultaneous two-component” to your list?

in the light of current knowledge it should be quite certain that if there was inflammation, there is also neurodegeneration present at the same time in the pathology of MS (not necessary vice versa, though).

(not necessary vice versa, though)

Important questions remain regarding the pathogenesis of MS.

It is still not known whether the inflammation directed at CNS antigens is the primary process in MS or an intermediate process.

Is there a parallel degenerative process that might precede and progress only partly in relation to inflammatory events?

It is also unclear to what extent MS represents one disease with stages, a series of phenotypes with diverse causes, or a genetically influenced variable response to inciting factors.

The temporal relationship between inflammation and disability remains to be elucidated, as well as the reasons why inflammatory events appear to recede in later stages of MS.

...in the early stage of acute and relapsing multiple sclerosis, focal plaques in the white matter are formed by relapsing waves of inflammation. With chronicity, however, the inflammatory response becomes trapped behind the blood-brain barrier, giving rise to slowly progressive inflammatory damage that affects the brain and spinal cord in a global sense.

First of all, and just to prove I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, I made a mistake in the previous post: I didn't mean potassium and sodium; I should have said calcium -- I woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning realising this, which just goes to show that even my dreams are boring!

Finn, I take what you said as a real compliment, especially coming from someone who obviously has an excellent understanding in this field. And as for your English: I would NEVER have guessed you weren't a native English speaker... I'd always assumed you were an English person living in Finland!
I don't have any specialist knowledge about the nervous system: I just do exactly as you guessed; just take various bits of information about research and piece together the ones that seem to fit. A specialist would probably demolish anything I have to say in a few seconds.

Bob, I think what the research was getting at was maintenance. As you know, every cell and structure in the body is regularly repaired, maintained and replaced, and in the case of axons the strength, and possibly frequency, of electrical impulses seems to be a crucial signal to the body to continue that maintenance. If those impulses weaken and stop, so will any effort to repair and tissue, (both axons and myelin), will wither away.
Of course, this still doesn't answer the question about which comes first: myelin damage or axonal decay, or indeed what is the root cause of these events, but I suppose if we knew that this website could close down
That was a really good point you made about seeing the whole length of an axon -- a bit like trying to see an entire piece of spaghetti in a plate full of bolognese. It made me think: the discovery that unmyelinated Grey matter axons also die in MS made everyone revise the theory that demyelination was the key factor. But what if those axons are only kept alive by the constant stimulation they are supposed to receive from their myelinated neighbours? Demyelination occurs, this weakens the "please keep me maintained" electrical signal in every axon down the line , and we see atrophy in both grey and white matter .

I'm just thinking out loud here as I'm writing, and haven't really thought this through, but my head's spinning so I think I'd better go and concentrate on something simple like quantum physics.

Bob, thanks again for the information you sent me: you've definitely got me convinced about helminths!

Dom.[/i]