Hello Lyndacarol,
please try to get your ferritin value. (Is there type2-diabetes in your family? Liver diseases...)
The most common genetic disorder is iron storage disease, hereditary hemochromatosis, somewhere in the promille range. The "carriers" are in the 10% range and have the tendency to store more iron than the "wild type", that is the other ca. 90% = the majority.
I suspect that iron storage is a factor in MS progression, or neurodegeneration (which is said to set in in CIS already, and in women frequently starts to become obvious in postmenapause): MS lesions might result from small bleedings from inflammed venules / small veins. Hemoglobin is degraded and iron may remain in the extracellular space in MS lesions if not efficiently removed by transferrin (or some other mechanism? The CNS is special in many respects - and of course difficult to study...).
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I disaggree with your statement that the cause of MS is not known.
Indisputably there is a genetic predisposition for MS (certainly very heterogenous: over 100 mutations "identified"...). But this predisposition is without any (obvious) effect unless an external factor is added. (In principle there might be several, even different diseases ending in the "McDonald diagnosis", but for simplicity we may assume a single disease, a "nosological unit" MS.)
To find the cause epidemiology is the handle to come to grips with the problem. I.e.
1. Twiin studies, especially identical = monozygous twins, MZ. If one of them has MS in Sweden (best twin register worldwide) the other has a risk below 20%, and the common home environment (food etc. - including glyphosate...) is without effect, as far as the "all or none" MS risk is concerned.
MS is based until about age 15 (+/-...; textbook knowledge), and twins (normally) live together in their family up to this age...
Please think about what remains as a possible cause of MS (all or none: one of the MZ twins has MS, the other does not have it, MRT, CFS, reflexex etc. etc. all ok).
2. Geographic epidemiology: most prevalent in temperate climate - but the cause certainly is NOT low sun exposure or Vitamin D in food... (see above).
What is little known: MS risk is much lower in Alaska than for example in Vancouver or Portland. It is much lower in North Norway than in the South. What could make the difference?
To cut it short: far in the North with long snow cover there are few or no mice, which are the main hosts for ticks (hard ticks).
Prof. Gabriel Steiner in 1922 found that the MS risk was much higher in those persons with a high "tick exposure", even remembering tick bites. (I "counted" more than 60, when I started to recall my personal history...)
3. Ticks can transmit dozens of different infections, many of them chronic: Which one might be the cause of MS?
You get the message / see the road to find the cause? MS is by definition focal, and the change over time and location tells us that the cause is active over decades and has to be found
within the active MS lesions.
That's what Prof. Steiner did: look for bacteria in active MS lesions. And he was successful in the late 1920s, published a 200 page review on his findings in 1931 and a book in 1962 summing up his findings over almost half a century:
MS is the result of a chronic infection with borreliae, quite similar to the syphilis spirochete (which can produce a clinical picture not distinguishable from MS) - but with a completely different mode of transmission, MS being a "zoonosis", a vector-borne infection, transmitted by blood-sucking insects, mainly ticks but possibly horse flies... (and in rare cases transmission from mother to fetus / child).
This theory is in itself consistent (especially in its analogy to late neuro-syphilis, where the causative agent has been found / documented in the disease brain a century ago): Such a theory in science represents the current "truth": best explanation, and at present no other good explanation. ((Take CCSVI: we would have to ask why the MZ twin with MS has it - has this been investigated? - and the healthy twin does NOT have it - has this been investigated? The problem with the cause is not solved by blaming it on CCSVI, but now we would have to find out what causes CCSVI... - in one MZ twin and NOT in the other...))
I am firmly convinced that the cause of MS has been "known" for more than 8 decades, but is simply ignored to this day: an active chronic focal infection of the CNS with borreliae, typically transmitted by ticks, hard ticks - predominantly in those regions where these ticks are abundant.
This is supported (?backed up) by lots of evidence, i.e. from what is known to have some control over MS, i.e.:
--- IVIG (which are antibodies from a large pool of blood donors certainly containing anti-borrelial antibodies).
--- "Immunosuppressants" / cytotoxic drugs which not only kill / suppress cells of the host = patient with typical "side" effects, but are cytotoxic against bacteria, too, which are also cells with DNA etc.
--- Most important: A few antimicrobials with the required characteristics (able to cross the BBB, active against spirochetes) are highly effective in active (early...) MS: mino- and doxycycline...
This is what Prof. G.Steiner was aiming at: find the cause, then find means to fight this cause. (Of course an immunisation against B.burgdorferi would be perferred: science is working on that matter, one vaccine is in clinical trial, which takes years... -- but for the time being we have doxycycline as the standard therapy for tick borreliosis, no serious discussion about that.
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The cause of MS IS "KNOWN", but it has been ignored for many decades, along with the drug of choice to combat this cause of the disease (both MS and late neuroborreliosis - and btw doxycycline is the second-line drug for syphilis if the patient is allergic against the first-line drug penicillin.).
I suppose this sounds unbelievable to you: Why would the cause bei ignored for decades?
Well, that is a long story: should I tell it? I'll try in a few paragraphs:
Gabriel Steiner was born in Ulm / Germany, like Albert Einstein, 4 years apart. Both were Jews.
Einstein won the Noble Prize in 1921, emigrated to the US, was world famous...
G.Steiner was expelled from his post as a professor at the University of Heidelberg by the Nazis right away in the spring of 1933, emigrated to the US in 1936 - but was not famous.
To make it short: After the war German neurologists mainly had made their career during the 12 years of the "3.Reich", were not fond of "jewish science", but their own "junk" -- so the work of Gabriel Steiner (very far away in Detroit) was ignored, forgotten...
His reviews and the 1962 book are written in German. After the war English became the universal language of science - and nobody bothered to translate the major works of G.Steiner.
Can you read German?
http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2 ... 42-87571-7
Read this book, try to find flaws in it (which is practically impossible: it has been confirmed by so many other groups...): This is the present "TRUTH" regarding the central cause of MS. If nobody can / does disprove this "truth" it will remain true.
It may seem unbelievable, but you have to turn the switch in your thinking form "the MS cause is NOT known" to the cause of MS IS known. Hard to do?
chenman