You must have heard of the disease Multiple Sclerosis, and if you haven't heard about it before then I am telling you now so you can just sit back and learn about this disease that comes with numerous symptoms including loss of vision, fatigue and inability to move (loss of mobility).
The topic is getting interesting I guess? For many years, the cause of this disease was unknown and so doctors instead of tackling the disease were tackling the symptoms associated with the disease. Something like treating fever in a case of Malaria instead of fighting the protozoa causing the illness. In recent times, we have been able to identify the cause of Multiple Sclerosis (MS), and as you would guess, we should have gotten a treatment for the disease since we know what causes it but the answer is NO.
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The question now is "Are we going to get a treatment for this?", and the answer is a shade of gray, as we could say yes, possibly in the future or we just say we should keep our hands crossed. Why that is another question you might want to ask? Well, the answer will revolve around the fact that the cause of Multiple Sclerosis is a Virus, and it is a virus that affects everyone, and all the attempt to create a vaccine has failed. The question now is "are we going to find a cure for multiple sclerosis?"
Affecting around 3 million people worldwide annually, multiple sclerosis is associated with symptoms including weakness, spasms, vision problems, dizziness, and so on, it is not fatal, and the disease progress differently in different people. People with Relapsing-Remitting MS, the symptoms occur in form of attacks and that will be all but in the progressing form, the symptom will worsen over time.
With multiple Sclerosis, the immune system attacks the myelin in the nerve cells which surrounds the neurons of the nerves serving as a protection for the nerve as well as help the nerves transmit signals faster but when the neurons lose their myelin it will be trickier for coordination and movement.
Scientists have been suspecting the Epstein Barr Virus which is the virus that causes mononucleosis but then they have been able to prove that it is connected to the virus. Although scientists have found that 95% of the world's population are infected with EBV at one time or the other in their lives but less than 0.4% of them get Multiple Sclerosis which means that there is more to investigate in this.
Scientists decided to perform a study on people and they realized that in the group of people that were studied, people who had multiple sclerosis surely had EBV, but then how did it play out. The study showed that some people had EBV and a damaged myelin in the neuron but didn't show symptoms of multiple sclerosis, after which they can begin to show symptoms.
To understand how this occurs, scientists are working on it but it comes to a possibility of the immune system trying to attack EBV only to attack its neurons. A 2023 study showed that the T-Cells could mistake the two as the immune system could attack a protein in EBV known as EBNA1, as well as a myelin protein CRYAB which have short segments that are identical.
Scientists have been trying to vaccinate against EBV but this virus is quite complex as it infect multiple types of cells, have multiple life cycle that takes place in multiple phases and its
structure is in multiple layers, so getting the right part of the virus to vaccinate against is quite difficult. Vaccines to attack the gp350 on the virus surface are yet to be approved for use, using vaccines that that sends different mRNA to alter the sequencing of the virus is also in trial but are yet to e approved for use. Scientists are also looking at targeting the T-cells that attacks the protein of the neurons or the B-Cells such as using Ocrelizumab to target the B-Cells so as to prevent Multiple Sclerosis from occurring.
While the journey to unravel the mysteries of Multiple Sclerosis presents challenges, the ongoing exploration of the viral connection offers hope for future advancements in understanding, prevention, and treatment of this enigmatic disease.
Read More
- https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/disorders/multiple-sclerosis
- https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adg3032
- https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj8222
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41582-023-00775-5
- https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-launches-clinical-trial-epstein-barr-virus-vaccine
- https://trials.modernatx.com/study/?id=mRNA-1189-P101
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8862399/