This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

Dear all,

Article below is from the Boston Cure Project website. Looks like lesions may not be the primary culprits in spinal cord atropy (I wonder if this also holds true for the brain). Axonal degeneration is a phrase which keeps cropping up. Does anyone know how close researchers are to identifying the cause of the axonal degeneration and how it can be halted / reduced etc?

When will treatments stop being judged on how well they stop exacerbations / reduce lesions and focus on what seems to be the real issue - stopping the degenearation?

Bromley




"Disability in MS has been associated in some studies with the degree of spinal cord tissue loss, or atrophy, but how/why this atrophy occurs is not well understood. A recent analysis of post-mortem spinal cord tissue from MS cases and controls sought to examine this question. Researchers looked at cross-sectional areas and lesion loads in the spinal cords of 55 MS subjects and 33 controls. They confirmed that the degree of atrophy was higher in the MS spinal cords than the controls, and looked for factors that may be related to atrophy. They found that spinal cord lesions were not a key factor in influencing atrophy; on the other hand, duration of disease was the strongest determinant. The authors suggest that an axonal degenerative process, either affecting the spinal tissue directly or originating elsewhere in the CNS, is more important in causing spinal cord atrophy than local lesions."

Hi, bromley!

I speculated in other threads the exact same thing. (I think in our grey matter discussions with Robin and Wesley).

My thought, also, is something is going wrong directly with the axons.

Anyway, MY thought is that anything that assists to protect the axons (or that stimulates axonal growth or re-growth) should help tremendously in MS. (And here I go again), but I have found at least ONE substance (if not some others) that can help do that very thing.

It's just that there is no big money to be made by using the substances or pursuing them. And that's my two cents!

Deb

. . . and the ONE substance would be???

Desipramine. The one I've done all the research on and have posted on here many many times over the months, and have submitted my research all over, but can't get anyone to do a clinical trial (gee, it's an oral drug and doesn't cost much), even though no researcher whom I've submitted my correlations to can find any flaws in it.

Levetiracetam is pretty protective, also, since it also inhibits Ca2 influx, which damages axons.

Deb