Simplifying the complicated

Two recent findings have advanced scientists' understanding of multiple sclerosis. In a New England Journal of Medicine paper, Cleveland Clinic researchers showed that the irreversible nature of disease progression in chronic MS may be due to the severing of axons in MS brain lesions. Separately, Thomas Jefferson University researchers published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences a relatively simple potential treatment for the disease.

Previously, MS was thought to be primarily the result of demyelination of neurons, a loss of the protective sheath around axons possibly due to an autoimmune response. By examining brain tissue of deceased MS patients by direct microscopy and immunocytochemistry with several antibodies, however, the Cleveland researchers found that MS lesions contain a sizable number of severed axons. The researchers suggested that demyelination progressively leads to axon transection and clinical neurologic deterioration...