Good News and Bad News in the Search for a Cure for Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a progressively debilitating disease where the patient's own immune system destroys the fatty myelin sheath around his/her nerves. The sheath is important as it allows nerve impulses to pass quickly along the neuron. MS can result in a loss of balance, blindness and a variety of motor impairments (including the loss of the ability to walk). Although there is currently no cure for the condition, a number of drugs have been approved for lessening the symptoms and/or slowing the progression of the condition. Recent studies have been described where the drug bexarotene was administered to patients with relapsing MS (an early form of the disease). The good news is that brain scans demonstrated that the myelin sheath was newly intact after treatment and visual signals passed more quickly from the retina to the visual cortex in the brain. (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/25/ms-treatment-step-closer-drug-shown-to-repair-nerve-coating-trial-multiple-sclerosis). Both findings confirm that remyelination of the nerves is possible (at least in this early stage of MS). The bad news is that there were a variety of side-effects (damage to both the thyroid and the pancreas) that preclude bexarotene's clinical use. The fact that remyelination can occur is, however, important. Another study aims to combine a diabetes drug, metaformin with an anti-histamine, clemastine. The combination has been shown to produce remyelination in animal studies by rejuvenating the stem cells that secrete the myelin sheath. The hope is to find drug treatments that can repair the myelin sheath without having dangerous side-effects.