Hi NHE,
I am sorry; I did put snarky alert on that section of my post! I'm just expressing myself
I agree that Opexa did uncover several target antigens however, not that many MSers had MRTC.... My neuro who was running a trial in is large MS clinc was very disappointed that it was very clearly not pathognomic. In fact when I poke with him he said that in thier clinic they were finding only a 10% minority with them...I beleive I read later materials that suggested it was more like 40-50%, but certainly ont all.
That having been said, perhaps the reason for that is that only a limited number of people actually respond to this anomaly CCSVI with autoimmune "triggering".
But that assumes that what is true is that those MRTC were NOT useful in the process of cleaning up the dead oligodendrocytes/myelin and that the only characterization that can be drawn form thier presence is autimmunity rather than normal activation in a necrotic situation. The main point that MUST be understood is that considering the venous issue the area is damaged by that: it is not healthy tissue. It is normal for the body to clean up necrotic tissue, that is a normal immune function.
I also agree with your idea of the body trying to self regulate in the case of autoimmunity, the true autoimmune diseases like EAE are self limiting. So is rheumatic fever--by "true" I mean a case where there is an antigen that is attacking healthy self tissue and causing damage on its own. In this case the body is cleaning up myelin, no doubt, but it is dead myelin that was damaged from this issue....the immune system did not go to a healthy brain and attack it for no reason.
The question remains if these t cells would attack and damage myelin that is healthy, I believe there will be considerable effort going into solving that exact question.
I am greatly encouraged by the fact that Dr Z has some people he has treated long ago, surely we will hear if these people seem to need additional support to remain healthy.
My personal opinion is that once the body is free of the repeated onslaught of damage from the venous issue, the body will rapidly self regulate with little if any additional support, but it may be that people will use immune suppression for a time too. I absolutely positively do not know that answer to that.
I do know that in the case of spinal cord injury and also stroke, neother of which are immune caused, immune suppression is helpful in limiting the activity of the immune system which can cause extra damage of its own in the attempt to repair. It may be that THAT is what is needed here too.
I'll be really surprised if we need anything like Campath lifelong however...
That having been said I was very VERY disappointed about the tovaxin trial. I liked it a lot as I felt it the safest thing offered in many years...
I hope if we need somthing that is good enough--or that copaxone is fine.
Wouldn't it be cool if this CCSVI treatment made copaxone as effective in people as it is in mice--who are cured by the stuff???
I am BTW taking cop and will continue at least for a while..
We actually all agree!!
I'll start a new thread on being here in stanfor too
marie