February 20, 2007

Pregnancy may lead to a new therapy for MS

Researchers at the University of Calgary have discovered that the pregnancy associated hormone prolactin may be responsible for the reduction of MS symptoms usually occurring during pregnancy.

The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, indicated that prolactin could be used in people to repair damage caused by MS and improve their symptoms.

Pregnant mice had many more myelin-producing cells, known as oligodendrocytes, than virgin female mice of the same age, the study found.

The researchers destroyed myelin around the nerve cells in the mice, as occurs in MS. Two weeks later, the pregnant mice had twice as much new myelin as the other mice. When the scientists injected prolactin into the non-pregnant mice, their myelin similarly was repaired.

"The implications are that prolactin may be a molecule that can be tested in MS patients for stimulating repair," Samuel Weiss, director of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute at the University of Calgary and senior author of the study, said in an interview.

Prolactin increases in the body during pregnancy and is involved in stimulating milk production among other things.
It's a quite common finding that women with MANY different auto-immune disorders have fewer symptoms during their pregnancies. It will be EXTREMELY interesting to see if the prolactin findings can be extended to other disorders, and whether the mechanism of prolactin is specific to myelin production or facilitates increased myelin levels indirectly via a protection mechanism. Or if other pregnancy hormones have similar effects, especially as inflammatory exposure can have devastating effects on a developing fetus.

Posted by caltechgirl at February 20, 2007 03:03 PM | TrackBack
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