MS: Rebuilding in the brain

02.10.2012 - (idw) Julius-Maximilians-Universitt Wrzburg

In patients suffering from multiple sclerosis, the brain is capable of compensating for certain disorders to some extent. How it does this has been examined in detail by medics from Wrzburg University Hospital. Their findings may help to improve treatment. Patients who suffer from multiple sclerosis (MS) typically present with centers of inflammation in the brain and spinal cord, which cause symptoms that range in severity depending on site and size. For example, sufferers feel a tingling sensation in their extremities, they stumble more or they have difficulties seeing. In extreme cases, they become incapable of moving around on their own and are confined to a wheelchair.

How the brain compensates for damage

The brain, however, often manages to minimize the functional damage caused by such centers, i.e. the damage that is noticeable to the patient. It has various tools at its disposal for this purpose: firstly, processes that are based on a rapid reinforcement or reduction of nerve cell contacts; secondly, the transfer (usually with a delay) of certain tasks from the damaged region of the brain to a healthy one. Plasticity is the name science has given to this ability on the part of the brain to adapt to changed conditions.

The answer to the question as to which mechanisms actually underlie this compensation in MS patients is of great clinical value. If medicine were to manage to boost the compensation mechanisms in a suitable location with the help of drugs or physiotherapy, it might be possible to delay or even prevent the onset of disabilities that are caused by MS.

Plasticity in the locomotor system

Now scientists from the University of Wrzburg have managed to make some progress in the search for the processes responsible. Together with colleagues from Bamberg and Leipzig they have taken are closer look at a variant of the neuroplastic processes that begin rapidly: the so-called excitability-decreasing plasticity, which is significant in the focus on certain movements. The team led by the medics Professor Joseph Claen and Dr. Daniel Zeller has now published its findings in the online journal BioMed Central Neurology.

We were able to show that an early form of neuroplasticity is fully retained in the locomotor system of patients slightly to moderately affected by MS despite pre-existing inflammatory damage, concludes Daniel Zeller, physician at the universitys Department of Neurology.

The study

14 MS patients and a control group of 14 healthy participants were examined by the scientists as part of this study. With the help of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), they temporarily paralyzed an area of the brain that is responsible for hand movement and then examined whether healthy brains and MS brains differ in their response to this. Studying this form of plasticity in multiple sclerosis is especially interesting, says Zeller. After all, it directly targets those mechanisms that limit the excitability of neurons. This means that it might be possible to translate the results directly into treatment strategies.

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MS: Rebuilding in the brain