Get me a pregnant mouse
Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 9:06 am
- syckbastid
From the article:
“The study, …, compared pregnant and virgin female mice of the same age and found that pregnant mice had twice as many myelin-producing cells, called oligodendrocytes, and continued to generate new ones during pregnancy. By chemically destroying myelin around nerve cells, the researchers found that pregnant mice had twice as much new myelin two weeks following the damage as virgin mice and that introducing prolactin mimicked the effects of pregnancy on myelin production and repair in mice that weren't pregnant. “
Well, Canadians seems to gave up their extensive search (of 20 years) for genes ‘responsible’ for MS and switched to the mainstream – ‘discovery of perspective drug’ for MS on the fast track.
The main problem with this article that in reality there is no twice amount of OL in pregnant mice. The number of OL (in situ) is definite after puberty. There we have temporarily activated OL, which under normal circumstances are silent and do not content markers for myelin.
This activation is global for whole brain and it could be considered like positive side-effect of the pregnancy when starting activation of OL in the fetus brain takes place.
In EAE model remyelination under prolactin influence will be more effective because of its anti-inflammatory features (mostly, but not only by that , of course).
Pregnant MS women are protected from relapses not only by prolactin alone, there is a combination of changes of various hormones ratio and it is a cycle, which has certain time limit (it could not be extended over the time).
Kind regards,
Tony