This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Knowledge & Support Community
Welcome to This is MS, the leading forum for Multiple Sclerosis research and support. Join our friendly community of patients, caregivers, and researchers celebrating over 20 years of delivering hope through knowledge.
... To tease apart the effects of vitamin D versus UV light, the DeLuca Lab uses a mouse model that exhibits symptoms similar to those in human MS. They began experimenting with isolating parts of the spectrum to see which would protect against the disease. Through years of work, his team, led by assistant scientist Yanping Wang, learned the real relationship is between a band of ultraviolet light, one different from the band that produces vitamin D, and MS. Their results showed that longer UVA wavelengths did not offer protection, but shorter UVB, another type of UV radiation, wavelengths did.
...
A large amount of vitamin D, on the other hand, also confers protection but only if it raises serum calcium above normal, which is very harmful to the body.
...
DeLuca says the ability of this narrow band of light to treat the disease is currently available through patents filed with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) and the team hopes it can be used in clinical trials on humans. Their ultimate goal is to dig deeper to understand more about how this narrow band confers protection from MS to try to devise treatments.
Sunlight exposure has long been associated with the suppression of MS with the reduction in risk credited to vitamin D production. Vitamin D and sunlight have each been reported to protect against EAE, the mouse model of MS. However, little work has focused on conclusively showing whether sunlight is acting via vitamin D. Here, we examine whether UV can suppress EAE either in animals lacking the ability to make vitamin D or in animals lacking the VDR. In each case, UV fully retained its ability to suppress disease, demonstrating that neither vitamin D nor its receptor is required. Future investigation can now focus on uncovering the mechanism whereby UV suppresses EAE and presumably MS.
Highlights
•300–315 nm UV light suppresses MS symptoms in mice.
•UV light suppresses MS symptoms independent of vitamin D.
•UVA has no effect on MS symptoms in mice.
active members shape site content. if there is a problem, speak up!
use the report button to flag problematic post content to volunteer moderators' attention.
