Researchers need to treat multiple sclerosis as an immune disease, not a brain disease, experts say.
A new European study "proves" that the disease does not begin in the brain, but the immmune system, it was claimed.
The disease is known to be caused by damage to the myelin in the brain and by the development of auto-immune reactions.
The latest research, involving laboratory mice involved using genetic manipulation to cause damage to the myelin in the animals’ brains to see if it triggered auto-immune disease.
The findings have been reported in Nature Neuroscience.
The researchers say they stimulated the animals’ immune systems – but it still failed to cause MS-like disease.
Researcher Professor Burkhard Becher, of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, said: "At the beginning of our study, we found myelin damage that strongly resembled the previous observations in MS patients.
“However, not once were we able to observe an MS-like autoimmune disease.”
Fellow researcher Professor Ari Waisman, of the University Medical Center Mainz, Germany, said: "We were unable to detect an MS-like disease – no matter how intensely we stimulated the immune system.
“We therefore consider the neurodegenerative hypothesis obsolete.”
Primary oligodendrocyte death does not elicit anti-CNS immunity. Giuseppe Locatelli, Simone Wörtge, Thorsten Buch, Barbara Ingold, Friederike Frommer, Bettina Sobottka, Martin Krueger, Khalad Karram, Claudia Bühlmann, Ingo Bechmann, Frank L. Heppner, Ari Waisman and Burkhard Becher. Nature Neuroscience February 26 2012; doi: 10.1038/nn.3062
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