Could This Study Help Lead to a Cure for Select Multiple Sclerosis Patients?

Source: National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Facebook

For a disease that affects 2.5 million people around the globe and more than 400,000 people in the United States, it's a shame that so little is known about multiple sclerosis despite the amount of money being put into research of the disease.

MS is usually diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 40 and is a progressive autoimmune disease that breaks down the myelin sheath that encapsulates a person's neurons and can negatively affect motor function.Researchers have long believed the disease triggers due to some combination of genetic and environmental factors. MS tends to have a higher incidence rate the farther you get from the equator, but no one is entirely certain why.

Taking into account that there is no cure for MS, ongoing research into the disease is greatly needed.

Apparently researchers are heeding this advice because for the second time in about a month new data emerged on MS that could lead to more targeted and successful treatments.

Could this be game-changing news for select MS patients? According to a seven-author study published last month in the journal ASN NEURO , a discovered genetic variant found in women could be one of the strongest genetic predictors of whether or not MS will develop.

Following a chronicled instance where five siblings all developed MS (a rare occurrence), researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago were able to test for a specific gene variant in three of five sisters (all between the ages of 23 and 26) that were diagnosed with MS. Their findings showed that there was a change in a single base-pair of DNA (known as a single nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP) in the STK11 gene in all three sisters. This gene is believed to play a role in tumor suppression as well as other brain functions.

Source: Novartis

Further research by senior study author Doug Feinstein uncovered prior completed mouse model studies where the STK11 gene had been disabled. Within those studies researchers observed a higher incidence in the loss of myelin from the mice's central nervous system. In other words, this was a pretty striking parallel with what occurs in patients with MS.

In order to establish that the SNP in the STK11 gene was a potentially valid risk indicator, researchers examined DNA samples from 1,400 people, of which 750 had MS and 650 did not. The findings showed that this particular SNP was 1.7 times more prominent in women with MS than women without MS.

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Could This Study Help Lead to a Cure for Select Multiple Sclerosis Patients?