This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

I had a theory relating to MS cause, well, not just Multiple Sclerosis but all such auto-immune diseases. Please read the following clip on "Vanishing-twin syndrome":


Stranger than Fiction In extremely rare cases of vanishing twin syndrome, two early stage embryos fuse into a single embryo containing two unique sets of DNA. The surviving twin becomes what�s known as a chimera�essentially two people in one body. Chimeras can have different sets of DNA in different body parts. For instance a male chimera can have one type of DNA in his skin cells but what appears to be an entirely different person�s DNA in his sperm cells.
A 2003 study in the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr Margot Kruskall of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, reported the case of a mother who required a kidney transplant. All three of her natural sons were tested as potential donors, but only one appeared to be her biological son, although she gave birth to all of them. Genetic tests revealed that the patient was a chimera�a physical blend of fraternal twin sisters�and her ovaries produced eggs belonging to both twins, thus she could give birth to three sons who were genetic half-brothers; one of them sharing DNA with his mother and two sons sharing DNA with their vanished �aunt.�



I was thinking about the "absorbed-twin" phoenomenon, and it occoured to me: what if the reaction in a person with auto-immune disease is really the immune system attacking remnants of an absorbed sibling? It may explain the unpredictable timing of attacks in that the siblings DNA is close enough so that the body is not constantly attacking it, but different enough that it is sometimes viewed by the patients body as "other than".

Any Ideas on who I could bring this up to?

that's interesting!

I wonder if occurrences of this very rare type of vanishing twin, the fusing of the two embryos is brought on only in the Northern climates where ms is most common?

that would be very interesting..

.. and here are 213 pages on this: http://www.springerlink.com/content/33xl8243085v28vw/ although ms isn't mention in the abstract. I should have imagined that these authors would likely have investigated your hypothesis but it's omission in the abstract means that that they drew a blank?