Young Blood Reverses Multiple Sclerosis Damage in Mice

We may soon have a treatment for MS, if current mice studies prove to be effective on humans. Scientists at the University of Cambridge discovered that, by pumping young blood into the body of a mouse with MS, existing nerve damage could be reduced. Clearly, this could be a major breakthrough.

What is Multiple Sclerosis?

MS is a nerve disorder. Nerves are sheathed in myelin, which you can think of as the rubber around a power cord. It protects the nerve from your body and stray signals.

MS nerve damage is dealt by inflammation around the nerve. The pressure causes the myelin layer to break apart. Once exposed to the body at large, the nerves begin decaying. And while new myelin is produced naturally, the efficiency of its production decreases over time, essentially meaning that it repairs itself slower and slower as the years progress.

How does this treatment help?

While it still hasn’t moved beyond mice, the research showed that hooking a mouse with myelin damage up to a blood supply from a young mouse without it would repair the myelin damage. It does this by reactivating latent stem cells in your body which caused the myelin to regenerate and stop the nerve damage.

The young blood also brings a helpful boost of white blood cells that chow down on any left over myelin sheathing in the bloodstream and diseases that might cause trouble, like, say, inflammation.

"We know this debris inhibits regeneration, so clearing it up is important," said Amy Wagers, a member of the team that published the findings.

If this treatment proves effective in other patients, the idea of activating latent stem cells might prove to be more potent than transplanting or growing donor cells. So who know, it may be just a matter of time before we can cure many major diseases with nothing more than a blood transplant.

NewScientist Photo by : Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier