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Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Researchers are committed to finding out what causes MS and how to cure it. People living with the disease may hold the key, and without their participation MS research would come to a standstill. People with MS, and sometimes family members, can make a difference by donating their DNA from blood samples and by volunteering for clinical treatment trials and other studies. They can also make arrangements to donate their brain and spinal cord tissues.

Clinical trials are scientific studies designed to test the safety and efficacy of new agents or regimens for treating disease. Without people with MS who are willing to serve as volunteers in these studies, we could not look forward to new and better therapies. Please also see NARCOMS, registry of people willing to participate in MS research initiated by the Consortium of MS Centers to facilitate multicenter studies.

Researchers around the world are collaborating to find the genes that make people susceptible to developing MS and other autoimmune diseases. These studies are fed by the participation of people with MS and their family members who donate blood samples from which DNA is derived.

Multiple sclerosis is an incurable autoimmune disease, meaning a person's immune system attacks the central nervous system, often causing disability. Now, a new study that scientists are hailing as a breakthrough showed microscopic nanoparticles were able to "stealthily trick" the immune system to stop attacking nerves.

The findings may even one day help treat other autoimmune diseases like Type 1 Diabetes or food allergies, according to the researchers.

"This is a highly significant breakthrough in translational immunotherapy," study co-author Dr. Stephen Miller, a professor of microbiology-immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Evanston, Ill., said in a press release. "The beauty of this new technology is it can be used in many immune-related diseases."

Autoimmune diseases occur when a type of white cell in the body's immune system called T-cells mistake the body's own tissues for foreign bodies, attacking them. Current treatments involve immune-suppressing medications which try to stall the immune system's destructive response, in the process leaving patients susceptible to infections and even cancer because of the reduced defenses.

In patients with multiple sclerosis, the immune system attacks myelin, a protective sheath of insulting material that encases nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord and helps cells communicate with each other. Disrupting these signals can result in symptoms ranging from mild limb numbness to paralysis and blindness.

For the research, published Nov. 18 in Nature Biotechnology, scientists developed nanoparticles that bound to antigens, substances that cause the immune system to produce antibodies targeting them. WebMD reports the nanoparticles were 200 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair and made from the same material used to create dissolvable stitches.

Using mice with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis -- the most common form of the disease affecting 85 percent of patients with MS - scientists injected nanoparticles attached with myelin antigens into mice, which were then engulfed by immune cells.

However instead of destroying the cells, the immune system was tricked into thinking the nanoparticles were ordinary dying blood cells that didn't pose a threat, inhibiting the myelin-attacking T-cells and calming the autoimmune response. Mice didn't have future relapses or flare-ups for up to 100 days, which would be the equivalent of years in a patient with a MS.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

"Our approach resets the immune system so it no longer attacks myelin but leaves the function of the normal immune system intact," study co-author Dr. Stephen Miller, a professor of microbiology-immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said in a written statement.

Monday, December 3, 2012

A Service Dog is defined in the Americans With Disabilities Act as "any guide dog,
signal dog, or other animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the
benefit of an individual with a disability, including but not limited to guiding
individuals with impaired vision, alerting individuals with impaired hearing to
intruders or sounds, providing minimal protection or rescue work, pulling a
wheelchair, or fetching dropped items."

Service Dogs must be allowed to go anywhere their handler goes, including
restaurants, schools, buses, taxis, airplanes, stores, movie theatres, concerts,
sporting events, doctor's offices, and any other public place. It is REQUIRED under
federal and state laws that they be allowed. They do not have to wear any specific
identifying gear, including vests. Many Service Dog users choose to dress their
dogs in a vest or other identifying apparel in order to make access easier, as it
avoids many questions and confrontations. This is a personal choice, and is NOT
REQUIRED UNDER THE LAW. It is illegal to ask for any special identification
from Service Dog partners. Some carry ID cards, and may present them voluntarily,
but this also is not required, and should not be expected. You may NOT ask for
"proof" or certification of the dog's training as a condition of entry into your
business.

If a Service Dog misbehaves and places someone in danger, you as a business
owner have the right to ask the partner to get control of the animal, or please leave.
This should be only an isolated incident, and can not be used to determine future
access based upon what "might" happen or has happened in the past. A person
with a Service Dog cannot be refused entry based on the actions of another Service
animal. Example: You cannot say "Oh, that last Service Dog team that was in here
left a mess, so I'm not letting any Service Dogs into my store anymore." This is
discrimination and can be punishable by law. Remember, too, that Service Dogs are
just that, DOGS, and they can have bad days just like people can. They are not
robots, and cannot be expected to act perfectly all the time.

MS
Views and News welcomes all individuals requiring service dogs at all
events. To ensure participants understand the laws and regulations that
must be adhered to, please click on this link:http://www.servicedogssavelives.org/laws.html

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and News (MSVN) organization wants to inform you of this educational
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To register for the
program, please use the number provided in the invitation.

As a service and courtesy to you, the MS Views and News (MSVN) organization wants to inform you of this educational opportunity. MSVN has had no role in developing the content or choosing speakers for this program. MSVN respects your privacy and does not disclose your personal information to third parties.

To register for the program, please use the number provided in the invitation.

US scientists have defined for the first time a key underlying process implicated in multiple sclerosis (MS)—a disease that causes progressive and irreversible damage to nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord.

Researchers in the laboratory of Gladstone Investigator Katerina Akassoglou, PhD, have identified in animal models precisely how a protein that seeps from the blood into the brain sets off a response that, over time, causes the nerve cell damage that is a key indicator of MS.

"We have shown that the leakage of blood in the brain acts as an early trigger that sets off the brain's inflammatory response—creating a neurotoxic environment that damages nerve cells,” said Dr Akassoglou

Dr Akassoglou and her team used advanced imaging techniques to monitor the disease's progression in the brain and spinal cord of mice modified to mimic the signs of MS.

The analysis allowed the researchers to study individual cells within the living brain—and to monitor in real-time what happens to these cells as the disease worsens over time.

Although Jean-Martin Charcot is credited with providing a comprehensive description of MS, reports of both MS and comorbid cognitive impairment precede Charcot’s 1868 lectures. Dr. Friedrich von Frerichs first cited MS-related cognitive impairment in 1849, 25 years after the disease’s initial clinical description. Despite multiple early accounts of MS as a disease affecting cognition, reports on the incidence of cognitive impairment in patients with MS were mixed over the following century. While some late 19th and early 20th century physicians recognized deterioration of cognitive faculties in more than half of their MS patients, others reported that only two percent of their patients with MS experienced blunted intellectual function.[1]1 Discrepancies in these figures are probably due to the fact that the majority of neurologists did not ask patients with MS about their cognitive function, and those neurologists who did inquire had inconsistent means of measuring cognitive function.

SYMPTOMS of MS

In multiple sclerosis , damage to the myelin in the central nervous system (CNS), and to the nerve fibers themselves, interferes with the transmission of nerve signals between the brain and spinal cord and other parts of the body. This disruption of nerve signals produces the primary symptoms of MS, which vary depending on where the damage has occurred.

Over the course of the disease, some symptoms will come and go, while others may be more lasting.

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