A new experimental breakthrough treatment using nanoparticles that are covered in proteins to trick the body’s immune system, has managed to stop the immune system from attacking myelin and halt the progression of relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis in mice. Researchers said the new approach might also help other applicable autoimmune diseases like type 1 diabetes and asthma.
The study’s results have suggested that nanoparticles are as effective of a way of treating diseases as using the patient’s white blood cells to help deliver antigen, another approach that is going through phase I/II testing currently in patients with MS.
The researchers reported that the study, which was sponsored the Myelin Repair Foundation, Bioengineering of the National Health Institute, the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and the National Institute for Biomedical Imaging was published online in the November 18 issue of Nature Biotechnology.
With MS, myelin, the protein forming a protective sheath insulating nerve fibers inside the spinal cord, eyes, brain and preserves the vital electrical signals carried by them, is what is targeted.
When the protein has been destroyed, the different electrical signals cannot travel and MS symptoms such as numbness, blindness or paralysis occur.
Close to 80% of patients with MS, have relapsing remitting MS, where during certain periods the symptoms flare up and periods where they do not bother, completely or just partially.
