carbon monoxide may protect against ms symptoms in EAE mice

[Frank]

The bright side of pollution...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... ptoms.html

--Frank

[CureOrBust]

mice were placed in a chamber where they breathed carbon monoxide (CO) at a concentration of about 500 parts per million for 20 days...a similar concentration of the gas can cause headaches and fainting in humans

http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF5/588.html

For comparison, undiluted cigarette smoke contains about 30,000 ppm of CO, undiluted warm car exhaust about 7,000 ppm, and the chimney of a home wood fire about 5,000 ppm. Clean countryside air contains about 0.02 ppm of CO. The smoke from one pack of cigarettes, if distributed uniformly throughout an average sized house, could result in a CO concentration of up to 14 ppm.

So I guess those smokers in LA would be doing better. Well at least EAE would probably be unheard of in the rats...

...Pharmaceutical companies are currently working on developing drugs that can deliver carbon monoxide locally within the nervous system...

I am personally suprised that we dont see treatments that involve direct injection of a compound into our CNS (not that thats what I want); however it is done with baclofen for symptomatic relief.

[marcstck]

There are some doctors experimenting with intrathecal (spinal) injections of methotrexate as an MS treatment. I had four such treatments, and although they didn't do anything for me, there is data to suggest that such treatments can be very effective...

[TwistedHelix]

Soares suspects that CO works in this fashion because it promotes the binding of iron to heme molecules within the nervous system. Heme molecules that lack iron can increase the production of free radicals, which damage cells.

Wasn't there some research recently which said people with RRMS excrete large amounts of aluminium in their urine, while with PPMS it's iron? Maybe we're not metabolising these things correctly?

Dom.

[billiechic]

I know this is an old topic, but I found it quite interesting.

I had carbon monoxide poisoning several years ago, and was wondering what affect it could have had on my MS (I was diagnosed about 2 years prior). I was expecting something horrible, but then I saw this mouse study. hmmmm...maybe that is why I went almost 9 years without a relapse (7 of those after exposure)...