A Cure for MS?

Via a mailing list: Science Daily reports that multiple sclerosis has been reversed in mice.

The new treatment, appropriately named GIFT15, puts MS into remission by suppressing the immune response. This means it might also be effective against other autoimmune disorders like Crohn's disease, lupus and arthritis, the researchers said, and could theoretically also control immune responses in organ transplant patients. Moreover, unlike earlier immune-supppressing therapies which rely on chemical pharamaceuticals, this approach is a personalized form of cellular therapy which utilizes the body's own cells to suppress immunity in a much more targeted way.
GIFT15 was discovered by a team led by Dr. Jacques Galipeau of the JGH Lady Davis Institute and McGill's Faculty of Medicine. The results were published August 9 in the prestigious journal Nature Medicine.
GIFT15 is composed of two proteins, GSM-CSF and interleukin-15, fused together artificially in the lab. Under normal circumstances, the individual proteins usually act to stimulate the immune system, but in their fused form, the equation reverses itself.

A caveat: this appears to be an early-stage treatment that may not reverse existing damage to the nerves.

Progressive Inflammatory Neuropathy

Via ProMED-mail: the AP reports that the CDC has given a name to the pork-inhalation autoimmune disease contracted by workers at a couple of slaughterhouses:

Minnesota officials said they were broadening their investigation to thousands of former employees at the Quality Pork Processors Inc. plant in Austin, going back a decade to when a powerful compressed air system was installed to remove brain tissue from pig heads.
Investigators have been trying to determine whether pig brain tissue, sprayed into the air as droplets during removal by the compressed air system, was inhaled by workers and made them sick.
If further investigation proves their theories true, they will have identified a rare, new condition that could shed light on a whole family of poorly understood disorders in which the body's immune system attacks the nerves or the sheath that surrounds them, the Star Tribune reported.

You'd think after mad cow, they'd be a little more careful about aerosolizing livestock brains, but no. PlagueBlog recommends avoiding all pork, short or long.

Morgellons Gets a Little More Respect

Via plime: the AP reports that the CDC has commissioned a study of Morgellons, a mysterious, possibly parasitic, possibly psychosomatic ailment that has been known possibly for centuries but dismissed as delusional parasitosis.

The study will be done in northern California, the source of many of the reports of Morgellons (pronounced mor-GELL-uns). Researchers will begin screening for patients immediately, CDC officials said Wednesday. A Kaiser official expects about 150 to 500 study participants.
Morgellons sufferers describe symptoms that include erupting sores, fatigue, the sensation of bugs crawling over them and — perhaps worst of all — mysterious red, blue or black fibers that sprout from their skin. They've documented their suffering on Web sites.

The Morgellons Research Foundation has more information, including pictures of the alleged neon threads that grow out of victims.

Where have all the gametes gone?

Strangely enough, an unnamed source was just telling me last night about theories of vasectomy-induced autoimmune reactions to all those trapped sperm. Today Reuters reports on research linking vasectomies to two forms of dementia:

Researchers at Northwestern University in Illinois, writing in the journal Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology, linked this male sterilization surgery to a neurological condition called primary progressive aphasia, or PPA.
They surveyed 47 men with the condition being treated at Northwestern's Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center, as well as 57 men who did not have PPA. Their ages ranged from 55 to 80.
Of those with primary progressive aphasia, 40 percent had undergone a vasectomy, compared with 16 percent of the others. Those with PPA also suffered the ailment an average of four years earlier than the others.
Preliminary data also linked vasectomies to another form of dementia involving behavioral changes. Among 30 men with frontotemporal dementia, more than a third had undergone a vasectomy, the researchers said.

The lead researcher postulates an autoimmune response:

The study did not look at the mechanism behind any link between PPA and vasectomies, but Weintraub said it may be because the surgery allows sperm to leak into the blood. Antibodies produced by the immune system in response to the sperm might trigger damage that causes dementia, she said.