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Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine have managed to block the development of multiple sclerosis-like symptoms using a mouse model of the disease.

When scientists gave mice a drug that suppressed the activity of a key molecule, immune cells lined up at the boundaries of the spine instead of going in. Scientists have blocked harmful immune cells from entering the brain in mice with a condition similar to multiple sclerosis (MS).... Read More - http://www.msrc.co.uk/index.cfm/fuseact ... ageid/2460

squiffy2 wrote:

Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine have managed to block the development of multiple sclerosis-like symptoms using a mouse model of the disease.

Can't count the number of discoveries that stopped the MS model in that poor mouse. To date, there has not been one treatment that has gone from mouse success to human success with this disease.

My wife was involved in a trial of a drug that stopped and reversed MS in the mouse. Trial was stopped after 12 months as one patient ended up dying from a heart attack caused by the drug. I wish they would come up with some other MS model for doing this research. EAE in mice is not close to human MS yet they continue coming up with research giving MS patients hope that never materializes.

Harry

Yes they need to come up with a model that takes ten years to start showing disabilities like it does with MS. Whoops, the mouse would be dead before that wouldn't it.

Well maybe they could use monkeys. But if you think it takes a long time to develop cures wait until they start using your perfect MS animal disease.

CVfactor wrote:Yes they need to come up with a model that takes ten years to start showing disabilities like it does with MS. Whoops, the mouse would be dead before that wouldn't it.

Well maybe they could use monkeys. But if you think it takes a long time to develop cures wait until they start using your perfect MS animal disease.

Now if they could just find an animal that mirrored MS in humans, they could focus on finding treatments that would possibly work as opposed to the constant barrage of "cures" they have discovered in that poor mouse!

Harry

It's an interesting read once you move past the mouse-model bashing. How MS breaks through the blood/brain barrier.

This is not a matter of "how" but a matter of "why". As far as I am concerned, unlike the mice, nobody injected brain material in my blood. And how about Prineas' et al study that no lymphocytes are present in human MS newly forming lesions... Can they replicate it in mice? If not, we need to throw this model to the trash.

I'll never understand how they keep getting funding for studying EAE. It's like the whole MS drug industry won't look down but that one rat hole.

Loobie wrote:I'll never understand how they keep getting funding for studying EAE. It's like the whole MS drug industry won't look down but that one rat hole.

Quite amazing, isn't it?!! Despite several papers by Dr. P. Behan, Prineas and others pointing out the shortcomings of the EAE model and decades old research thinking, little has changed. This is just another reason as to why after some 70 years of MS research they don't even know what causes the disease let alone have anything close to an effective treatment.

The biggest success...the billion$ of revenue generated by the MS big pharma machine.

Harry

Why can't they just punch-off the veins in the heads of those mice. That should work.

Bashing the EAE model is easy. Finding an alternative that researchers can use on a large scale is more difficult.

rainer wrote:Bashing the EAE model is easy. Finding an alternative that researchers can use on a large scale is more difficult.

I agree with you about trying to find a viable alternative to the EAE model. That is but one issue. I believe what most critics of EAE are saying (and that includes some very prominent MS docs) is that using EAE to try and figure out MS in humans has been and likely will continue to be, an exercise in futility.

How did Einstein define stupidity....doing the same thing over and over again and hoping to come up with a different result. Kind of fits the use of the EAE model in trying to solve MS!

Harry