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I saw this in our local paper (Hamilton, Ontario), it doesn't mention MS but does sound interesting. So I thought I would pass it along. The McMaster mentioned is McMaster University Medical Centre

Paralyzed rats walk after Mac treatment

Researchers' feat could help humans
By Joanna Frketich
The Hamilton Spectator
(Jul 24, 2006)
McMaster researchers are a step closer to curing paralysis after accidentally discovering how to regrow nerve casings required for the brain and body to communicate.
Paralyzed rats walked again after Dr. Shucui Jiang used a naturally-occurring compound called guanosine, found in many foods such as fish, to regenerate a protein and fatty substance called myelin that forms an insulating layer around nerves.
This myelin sheath allows rapid transmission of signals between the body and the brain. If the myelin is damaged, the messages are disrupted so finding ways to regrow the special insulation is crucial to curing spinal chord injuries.
"The animals were moving much better and walking much better," Jiang said.
It's a major breakthrough for Jiang and her colleague Dr. Michel Rathbone, who have already successfully regenerated nerves in the spine by transplanting cells from the intestine into the spinal cord.
"We're very excited," Jiang said. "We expect this will improve the chronically injured patients' function. Although, we don't know to which extent."
Human studies could begin within two years if Jiang is able to find enough funding.
She's part of the Hamilton NeuroRestorative Group (NRG) being announced tonight that is desperately searching for money from government, private donors or charities to stay afloat.
The NRG brings together spinal cord researchers at McMaster from a wide variety of fields such as neurology, rehabilitation, kinesiology, plastic surgery, cardiac surgery and basic science.
For the first time, they are collaborating with the hope that each of them holds a piece of the puzzle that will eventually lead to paraplegics and quadriplegics walking again.
"It's encouraging (that) a group of clinicians and scientists, who would normally never talk to each other, talk to each other," Rathbone said. "Normally we have solitudes."
The group, which started meeting in the fall, has already had progress discovering they had information to prove cancer patients who get spinal chord injuries from tumours improve their movement, overall health, psychologically well-being and even prolong their lives by exercising.
But continuing Hamilton's leading spinal cord research is in jeopardy unless the NRG gets at least $1 million a year to keep going. It is getting some help from the Golden Horseshoe Marathon.
The team raises money while wheeling from Niagara Falls to Toronto over five days in September.
They do a full 42.5 kilometres a day using everyday wheelchairs powered solely by their arms and upper body.
Athletes will cover a total of 212.5 kilometres.
But even if they make their goal of $500,000, it won't be enough.
"One generous sponsor would turn the tables," Rathbone said.

Human studies could begin within two years if Jiang is able to find enough funding.

Now isn't this sad....a potential medical treatment that could totally benefit millions of people...and these scientists are going to have to try and find the funding!!! I wonder how many drug companies will tell them to take a hike when they come asking for some research money!

Harry

Hi Jimmy,

Was born and raised in Windsor and lived in Toronto for almost 30 years. McMaster certainly has an excellent medical school and the hospital there is very good as well. Don't know much about the MS Clinic as my wife has used the Clinic at London all her life. How would you rate it?

Harry

interesting. here's some info on the path from fish to guanosine to uric acid. as we have seen, uric acid is low in ms and high in gout and gout and ms are mutually exclusive. when we examine guanosine metabolism, it ends up as uric acid. looks like fish and seaweed consumption could be good ways to make sure guanosine is making an appearance in our bodies and help keep our uric acid levels in a more appropriate range. also since it's in seaweed we can increase consumptin of that without worrying so much about bioaccumulation of toxins as when we consume fish.

http://www.med.uiuc.edu/m1/biochemistry ... chap29.htm

9. What are the steps in degradation of purines?
A: All purines eventually end up as uric acid (recognized by its 3-carbonyl groups), essentially all side groups are replaced by carbonyls in the process. Uric acid is excreted in the urine. Xanthine oxidase is involved in the last step.

AMP --> Inosine --> Hypoxanthine --> Xanthine --> Uric acid

GMP --> guanosine --> guanine --> Xanthine --> uric acid

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanosine_monophosphate
Guanosine monophosphate, also known as 5'-guanidylic acid or guanylic acid and abbreviated GMP, is a nucleotide that is found in RNA. It is an ester of phosphoric acid with the nucleoside guanosine. GMP consists of the phosphate group, the pentose sugar ribose, and the nucleobase guanine.

The sodium salt, disodium guanylate is a food additive used as a flavor enhancer because of its distinctive meaty taste.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disodium_guanylate
Disodium guanylate (E627), chemical formula C10H14N5O8P, is a food additive used as a flavor enhancer, in synergy with monosodium glutamate (the sodium salt of glutamic acid, MSG). As it is a fairly expensive additive, it is not used independently of glutamic acid; if disodium guanlyate is present in a list of ingredients but MSG does not appear to be, it is likely that glutamic acid is provided as part of another ingredient such as a processed soy protein complex.

Disodium guanylate is a flavor enhancer derived from dried fish or dried seaweed. It is a by-product of disodium inosinate.

actually harry i have a similar feeling about the excellence of macmaster in general, and am very pleased that it is my hospital.

however, wrt my personal experience, i'm a bit down on the whole thing so far - i kind of disagree with my first neuro's dx and diff dx (he was a peripheral guy who referred me to the ms clinic) and at the clinic they just confirmed ms and handed me the funding application forms for rebif.

once i decided against rebif i left a message at the ms clinic and there was zero response until one day when i was talking to the mac drug info centre about vitamin d, and they mentioned the clinic, and i related the previous lack of response once i decided against rebif. mysteriously next day the clinic did phone. i know that i'm just one of many patients, and that the lack of a reply shouldn't have coloured my thinking, but when i did eventually hear from them it didn't make a big impression - i have no recollection of what the clinic caller said to me at the time and i haven't communicated with them since. i'm not exactly in the country for the next few months either so there isn't much chance we'll be communicating any time in 2006!

the best things about my experiences with mac in january of this year were how available my peripheral neuro made himself when i was in the first terrified stage of the dx, and how quickly he was able to schedule two separate mris for me when time was of the essence. that i thought was frankly amazing and i really appreciated it. i sent him a thank you card

i am really glad to have mac as my hospital, but in the long term, on a day-to-day basis, i get much more comfort and information from this web site.

oo

Jimmy,

The only minor experience I had with the MS Clinic at Mac was a mini-seminar update sponsored by the Mississauga MS Society and paid for by Berlex. They invited a neuro from the MS Clinic to preach about Betaseron and how wonderful one of the trials was. When I asked him if any of the patients in the trial actually felt better while on the trial the answer was "no". You could have heard a pin drop when everyone in the audience stopped breathing for a few seconds.

Shortly after I asked the neuro on his view about Prokarin. Well, let's just say that his response wasn't very nice.

After the seminar, the Berlex rep approached me and we started talking. I asked her why the neuros wouldn't even consider testing Prokarin which at the time had just emerged. Her response.....and I'll never forget it..."they won't touch it because no money will cross their hands!!"

Let's just say that my skepticism about the entire MS research field went up a few notches that night.

Harry

hi i know i'm answering this what, three months later but here goes!

hi lyon i don't know how i missed your question about a study of ms and gout. i imagine it's been thoroughly answered by now? if not, yes there actually was a study where they were looking at uric acid and doing the eae thing, and they incidentally examined 20 million patient records and found ms patients at the low end of the uric acid range and gout sufferers at the high end. actually i just updated the wikipedia uric acid page the other day with references to that specific study - here's the link to the wiki page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uric_acid

and this link is straight to the article itself (full text and everything):

http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/articleren ... rtid=18479

harry i didn't respond to your post either, what was wrong with me? i must have had a deadline or something! oh ya it was that first powerpoint tutorial thing at that time... ANYWAY ya i wholeheartedly agree with the skepticism. it would be nice if we could only have useful research wouldn't it! maybe we wouldn't appreciate good research if we didn't have all the other nonsense in the picture? i don't know.