new biomarkers of disease progression linked to cholesterol

[frodo]

It seems that the Simvastatin connection is under research by the groups that investigate pathogenesis, and they have found that some cholesterol-associated levels can be used also to monitor progression

Extending lipid biomarkers of disease progression in people with multiple sclerosis
http://www.neurology.org/content/88/16_ ... .345.short

Conclusions: We identified associations between novel cholesterol subsets and plasma triglycerides and EDSS in MS patients that are independent of age and sex. These could discriminate disease ‘state’ with high specificity and sensitivity.

[frodo]

just to make explicit the relationship, I will post here some results and expectations of Simvastatin:

• Anti-cholesterol Drugs Slow Down Development of Multiple Sclerosis (https://themedcircle.com/anti-cholester ... sclerosis/); ... those who received drugs demonstrated a significantly slower rate of disease development. The drug slowed their rate of brain shrinkage by 43%.
• MS patients to trial statins treatment (http://www.ms-uk.org/ms-patients-trial- ... ent-090517); ... in a trial conducted three years ago, scientists found the rate of brain shrinkage was halved among 140 MS patients who took statins.
• The six year, £6m trial starting later this year will involve 1,180 people and will test simvastatin in people with the secondary progressive form of MS (http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/ ... 93578.html)

[frodo]

More about biomarkers

Source: http://www.jimmunol.org/content/198/1_Supplement/55.23

... We developed in a training cohort ... two biomarker-based classifiers that differentiate:

1. MS from CNS diseases that mimic MS clinically, pathophysiologically and on imaging, and
2. relapsing-remitting from progressive MS with ~90% accuracy.

Treatment-induced changes in biomarkers greatly exceeded intra-individual-and technical variabilities of the assay.

The observation that CNS biological processes reflected by combinatorial CSF biomarkers are robust, stable and disease- or even disease-stage specific opens opportunities for broad utilization of CSF biomarkers in drug development and precision medicine for CNS disorders.