mmcc53
10-06-2006, 08:38 PM
June 06, '06: The MS Lesion Project - Is MS More Than One Disease?
Category: General
Posted by: stuart
Disease activity and symptoms vary greatly among people with MS. In response to a recommendation from its volunteer Research Programs Advisory Committee, a senior panel of MS experts, in 1998 the National MS Society convened a task force to discuss whether looking at lesions?that is, areas of brain tissue where myelin has been stripped from nerve fibers?would reveal why people experience the disease so differently.
The task force noted that this issue was of prime importance, and ripe for development, and recommended a targeted research initiative to investigate it. Understanding lesion patterns can provide more information about differences in disease between individuals, which will enable doctors to make more accurate diagnoses, prognoses, and treatment decisions.
Early Findings
Claudia F. Lucchinetti, MD (Mayo Clinic and Foundation) and collaborators from the U.S., Germany and Austria were chosen to conduct this study for their groundbreaking contributions in this area. They have amassed a large collection of tissue samples from people with MS?a painstaking effort, because these are obtained through brain biopsies (a rare procedure) or autopsy. The group has reported promising findings on samples from 83 cases. They found four types of lesions, which differed in immune system activity. Within each person, all lesions were the same, but lesions differed from person to person. The researchers believe that this may be correlated with differences in disease type and prognosis, and perhaps with different responses to treatment.
This report suggests that there may be several types of MS with different immune-related causes (possibly different than the recognized four courses that MS can take, such as relapsing-remitting), and that MS may be a ?syndrome? of several diseases.
Follow Up: The MS Lesion Project
The MS Lesion Project has just been renewed with a commitment of $1.2 million for three years. The investigators are analyzing MS lesions in brain tissues from biopsies and autopsies to identify the types of immune cells and other immune factors involved with tissue destruction. The investigators are also examining clinical characteristics of the individuals from whom these tissues were taken, including clinical symptoms and stages of disease, response to therapy, magnetic resonance images, and immune characteristics of blood samples.
The researchers are attempting to correlate the clinical manifestations of the disease and findings from brain imaging (magnetic resonance) with the brain pathology seen directly in brain tissue. They are trying to confirm their initial findings of different patterns of immune pathology and any evidence of possible disease ?sub-types? that involve different, definable underlying pathologies. It is possible that such ?sub-types? of MS may evolve differently over time and may respond differently to the same therapies. Ultimately investigators could identify which individuals would do best with which treatments.
This study is pathbreaking because of the access to brain tissue being made available for study, its international scope, and the painstaking clinical and imaging follow-up involved. It will greatly increase our knowledge of the pathology underlying MS and should lead to therapeutic trials targeted to specific subgroups of people with MS.
http://www.nationalmssociety.org/Research-TargetedLesion.asp
Last updated December 14, 2005
Category: General
Posted by: stuart
Disease activity and symptoms vary greatly among people with MS. In response to a recommendation from its volunteer Research Programs Advisory Committee, a senior panel of MS experts, in 1998 the National MS Society convened a task force to discuss whether looking at lesions?that is, areas of brain tissue where myelin has been stripped from nerve fibers?would reveal why people experience the disease so differently.
The task force noted that this issue was of prime importance, and ripe for development, and recommended a targeted research initiative to investigate it. Understanding lesion patterns can provide more information about differences in disease between individuals, which will enable doctors to make more accurate diagnoses, prognoses, and treatment decisions.
Early Findings
Claudia F. Lucchinetti, MD (Mayo Clinic and Foundation) and collaborators from the U.S., Germany and Austria were chosen to conduct this study for their groundbreaking contributions in this area. They have amassed a large collection of tissue samples from people with MS?a painstaking effort, because these are obtained through brain biopsies (a rare procedure) or autopsy. The group has reported promising findings on samples from 83 cases. They found four types of lesions, which differed in immune system activity. Within each person, all lesions were the same, but lesions differed from person to person. The researchers believe that this may be correlated with differences in disease type and prognosis, and perhaps with different responses to treatment.
This report suggests that there may be several types of MS with different immune-related causes (possibly different than the recognized four courses that MS can take, such as relapsing-remitting), and that MS may be a ?syndrome? of several diseases.
Follow Up: The MS Lesion Project
The MS Lesion Project has just been renewed with a commitment of $1.2 million for three years. The investigators are analyzing MS lesions in brain tissues from biopsies and autopsies to identify the types of immune cells and other immune factors involved with tissue destruction. The investigators are also examining clinical characteristics of the individuals from whom these tissues were taken, including clinical symptoms and stages of disease, response to therapy, magnetic resonance images, and immune characteristics of blood samples.
The researchers are attempting to correlate the clinical manifestations of the disease and findings from brain imaging (magnetic resonance) with the brain pathology seen directly in brain tissue. They are trying to confirm their initial findings of different patterns of immune pathology and any evidence of possible disease ?sub-types? that involve different, definable underlying pathologies. It is possible that such ?sub-types? of MS may evolve differently over time and may respond differently to the same therapies. Ultimately investigators could identify which individuals would do best with which treatments.
This study is pathbreaking because of the access to brain tissue being made available for study, its international scope, and the painstaking clinical and imaging follow-up involved. It will greatly increase our knowledge of the pathology underlying MS and should lead to therapeutic trials targeted to specific subgroups of people with MS.
http://www.nationalmssociety.org/Research-TargetedLesion.asp
Last updated December 14, 2005