Apr
25
If finding a way to restore nerve cells’ protective coating were the only challenge, multiple sclerosis would be a more manageable disease.
But researchers at the UConn Health Center say MS also takes it toll on axons, the nerve cell extensions that carry nerve impulses.
The devastation hinders the ability of neurons to communicate with each other, resulting in debilitating neurodegenerative disease.
“The long-term disability of MS is caused by degeneration of axons that have lost their myelin sheath – their protective coating,” says Rashmi Bansal, an associate professor of neuroscience.
Bansal recently won a grant from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society for her research focusing on a specific protein and its role in MS.
In MS patients and mouse models, this protein, called fibroblast growth factor, increases in areas of the nervous system where the myelin is missing.
“There’s got to be an important connection of this observation with the disease scenario,” Bansal says.
Signals from these growth factors regulate the biology of cells called oligodendrocytes, which produce myelin in the central nervous system.
Fibroblast growth factors bind and signal to oligodendrocytes through three different receptors, which are the docking sites for these growth factors. Bansal’s previous research found this interaction varied depending on the receptor involved.
“Stimulation of one receptor versus the other led to different responses,” Bansal says. “And interestingly, we found that in oligodendrocytes, while one response was positive, the other was a negative pathological one.
So that raises the question of what the fibroblast growth factor is doing. Is it good or bad to have a lot of it in MS lesions?”
read more: UConn Advance - April 28, 2008 - Neuroscience researcher working toward a cure for MS
Apr
21
Multiple sclerosis eludes doctors | NewsOK.com
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Michelle Floyd woke up one morning about four years ago, her body numb from neck to feet.
The sensation — if being numb is a sensation — went away in slices, like lights were turned off sequentially from one end of a long room to the other.
Multiple sclerosis often strikes people in the prime of their lives; it hit Floyd, now 29, when she thought she was in perfect health.
The autoimmune disease, in which neurons in the brain and spinal cord lose the fatty covering that allows them to effectively conduct the electricity of nerve impulses, happens commonly in women in their 30s. It may eventually leave them in wheelchairs, their minds clouded and their muscles uncontrolled.
Or it may not. One of the hallmarks of multiple sclerosis is its unpredictability — perhaps the disease’s only real consistency is that it is inconsistent. Some patients are unsteady, while others are blinded. Some have numbness, slurred speech. Many have weakness.
“It’s exactly the lack of repetitiveness of it from patient to patient that gives you the clue to the diagnosis,” said Dr. Gabriel Pardo, medical director of the MS Center of Oklahoma at Mercy NeuroScience Institute and the state’s only physician who specializes in the disease. He called the disease “fascinating.”
read more: Multiple sclerosis eludes doctors | NewsOK.com
Apr
19
Benefit Managers Profit by Specialty Drug Rights - New York Times
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Doctors treating children with a rare and severe form of epilepsy were stunned by the news. A crucial drug, H.P. Acthar Gel, that had been selling for $1,600 a vial would now cost $23,000.
The price increase, put in place over last Labor Day weekend, also jolted employers that provide health benefits to their workers and bear the brunt of drug costs.
As it turned out, the exclusive distributor of H.P. Acthar Gel is Express Scripts, a company whose core business is supposed to be helping employers manage their drug insurance programs and get medicines at the best available prices.
But in recent years, drug benefit managers like Express Scripts have built lucrative side businesses seemingly at odds with that best-price mission. A growing portion of their revenue comes from acting as exclusive or semi-exclusive distributors of expensive specialty drugs that can cost thousands of dollars. And the prices of such medicines are rising much faster than for the mainstream prescription drugs available through a wide variety of distributors.
more:Benefit Managers Profit by Specialty Drug Rights - New York Times