Immune training MS trial 'safe'

6 June 2013 Last updated at 02:18 ET By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

An experimental treatment to stop the body attacking its own nervous system in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) appears safe in trials.

The sheath around nerves cells, made of myelin, is destroyed in MS, leaving the nerves struggling to pass on messages.

A study on nine patients, reported in Science Translational Medicine, tried to train the immune system to cease its assault on myelin.

The MS Society said the idea had "exciting potential".

As nerves lose their ability to talk to each other, the disease results in problems moving and balancing and can affect vision.

There are drugs that can reduce number and severity of attacks, but there is no cure.

The disease is caused by the body's immune system thinking that myelin is a foreign body like a flu virus.

Researchers at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine developed a technique to retrain the immune system.

They took blood samples and coupled white blood cells, a part of the immune system, to fragments of myelin. This was injected back into the patients to make them tolerate myelin.

Read the original:
Immune training MS trial 'safe'