Apr
21
Perhaps the essay that researcher Dale Edberg wrote about the future of his life was prophetic.
Top priorities? Further his education, then do multiple-sclerosis research.
He couldn’t have known that he would soon deal with the illness himself, after developing numbness and vision trouble.
“It was two years before I ended up going to the doctor,” he said. “I didn’t go to the doctor because I’m a guy and I blamed it on an old Marine Corps injury. The only reason I ended up getting diagnosed was because I went blind.” The only thing he could see on an eye chart was the giant E.
Edberg figures he was affected by MS for a reason — so that he could join a research team at Mayo Clinic that he now hopes will find not just a treatment, but a cure.
read the rest via Postbulletin.com: Rochester, MN.
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2 Responses to “‘An unfortunate inconvenience’ for MS researcher”
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It has LONG angered me that the MS Society supports but ONE line of research – that the immune system attacks the CNS for “some mysterious reason”. Obviously, there is always a breach in the blood-brain barrier. Maybe this is the start – that somehow, and this could happen by any # of means: infection, injury, etc. the sacred barrier is breached, letting in things that should never be allowed there. Then perhaps the immune system only goes about doing its proper job, defending the body from ‘poison’invaders. Maybe the “poisons” that enter the brain when the barrier is breached then attach to the matter of the CNS (which is pretty much all that is past the BBB,so that the Im system is attacking the “poison” invader that has attached to the nervous system and not the nervous system at all.
The MS Society has not only supported immune system research. They support blood-brain-barrier studies, stem cell and oligodendrocyte transplantation studies, studies on epidemiology and studies from my own laboratory, remyelination. A lot of issues with research have arisen from the animal model that was believed to be MS like. It was an inflammatory model, EAE and it was and is still believed to be the “model” of MS in animals. There are now more models and changes have occurred over the last 5 years. Such as the way it goes with science. As new things are uncovered the research shifts to follow the most important leads. Keeping up on the current research and literature is interesting and informative but more than likely there is no foreign invader attached to the myelin and neurons. It has an immune component, that is true without a doubt, but how the damage actually occurs is still a mystery and Dr. Lucinetti’s work from Mayo Clinic demonstrates that there are four types of damage. T-cell based, IgG based, oligodendrocyte apoptosis and oligodendrocyte nercrosis. Each individual only has one type of damage occurring but there is different types in different individuals. The MS Society is a very good organization which funds a lot of different types of research. It is one of the reasons that we have an antibody that promotes remyelination going to clinical trials next year. Wish it luck because it is the first therapy that fixes damage that already has occurred.