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MSBOB wrote:An infected B cell can repress the body's instructions for the cell to self destruction if it has been miscoded. Basically, if the cell had become sensitized to myelin at the time it was infected, the cell becomes immortalized - and so does the sensitivity to myelin.

How did it become wrongly coded? If it is attacking myelin (which, IMHO, is over-represented as the only thing that is under immune system's mistaken attacks) how does it become immortalized?

I think one feature of "MS" that has been under-recognized is its (to me, anyway) mysterious complementarity with cancer. I guess if DNA is being re-coded somehow, another way (and this relates to angiogenesis, the means by which the body deals with hypoxia) might be connected with the fractal expressions controlling growth of blood vessels. That might explain the uncontrolled growth of blood vessels in cancer cells, which leads to masses of growing tissue that don't respond to apoptosis signals.

Mutated DNA gives rise to an infinity of possible problems for the human host. Maybe those particular mutations in "MS" are less likely to occur, if those fractal-driven areas of DNA have been used by the virus for another purpose (like ensuring the virus's survival). That might make it complementary with "MS". In that sense the recoding is not mistaken at all, but Darwinian, and thus very hard to avoid.

I guess it might help to know more genetics.

While I don't discount the expertise of drug scientists (money has a way of ensuring that), and of course I have a built-in faith in the intelligence of pw"MS", I think doctors can, even unintentionally, lead them down a blind alley, because of drug-oriented thinking.

I am past thinking about making a killing on "MS" drugs. They seem to be the victims of some stock-manipulations, and besides, I can't take it with me.

The immune system depends on the thymus during maturation, up into a person's early twenties. Before then, we inherent our mother's immune system and the body uses the thymus to learn to program a new immune system. Many B-cells are defective. When the bad Bcell fails the thymus checkpoint, it is programed to self-destruct. This happens when the Bcell presents a protien to the thymus that the thymus recognizes as "self". The thymus releases another protien back to the Bcell that triggers a cascade. Some virusus like herp-like viruses infect both the endothelial cells and Bcells. Normally, immune cells are not exposed to the central nervous system. When they are exposed to protiens that are foreign to "normal self" the can overreact or possibly defect. Usually, the thymus catches these Bcells, but if infected the Bcell will fool the thymus into thinking all is clear.

DNA is pretty static, but epigenetic switches are learned from environmental factors. The switches tell the dna how it should be expressed. That's why identical twins could have one with cancer or ms and the other without.

EPV is linked to pharyngeal cancer, because it represses the immune system from attacking the mutated cells.

Last, I don't watch these companies for money. I watch them for their research.

B cells also harbor Epstein-Barr virus in the human body, and EBV has been implicated in the activation of HERVs.

It is very likely no coincidence that many of the current DMDs have antiviral properties. There are the interferons, of course, which are extremely antiviral, but also Novantrome, which was developed as a last line antibiotic, but also has antiviral properties. Additionally, Rituxan, which has been shown to be extremely effective in the treatment of MS, destroys B cells, effectively ridding the body of much of its EBV load. The drug amantadine, commonly prescribed to treat MS fatigue, is an antiviral used to fight the influenza virus.

I've heard through the grapevine that the HERVs trial in Sweden, which is using an experimental monoclonal antibody targeting an endogenous retroviruses that has been specifically linked to MS, is proving to be quite successful, and plans are in the works to enlarge the study from Geneva to a number of other European cities. The trial in London is slowly getting underway, but I know firsthand that the researchers are very enthusiastic about this approach.

As for not living long enough to see the fruits of this research, if the London trial, which uses an off-the-shelf anti-HIV drug (Raltegravir), proves to be successful, we could see this type of therapy spread like wildfire. I'm sure the biotechs that are making a fortune marketing immunosuppressant MS drugs will put up a struggle, but they'll be up against some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies that manufacture antiretroviral agents.

As for the discrepancies in the percentage of the human genome that is made up of human endogenous retroviruses, I think the following snippet, taken from an article published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, clears this up:

"Genome sequencing reveals that 8% of the human genome consists of human endogenous retroviruses, or HERVs, and, if we extend this to HERV fragments and derivatives, the retroviral legacy amounts to roughly half our DNA."

Marc, you sir have a wealth of information. Thanks for sharing.

I have studied bee stings, tape worms, aromatherapy, vitamins, diet, ccsvi, mmp inhibitors, interferons, cordycept mushroom zombie ants, coeliac disease, diabetes, sodium channels, potassium channels, chlamydia, measles, aids, cancer, hyperbaric oxygen, mercury, dioxins, stem cells, "happiness", dmf, jcv, and yada yada yada. I am a big skeptic, but I do think a viral cause of ms seems to be the most profitable line of future research. I am happy that scientists are still at it.