Researchers have found a possible way to protect people with multiple sclerosis (MS) from severe long-term disability: increase nervous-system levels of a vital compound, called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD), by giving its chemical precursor nicotinamide, a form of vitamin B3.
Current therapies for MS mainly address the relapsing-remitting phase of the disease, but some of these have severe side effects, and most patients eventually enter a chronic progressive phase for which there is no good treatment. Using a mouse model of MS, researchers in the Neurobiology Program at Children's Hospital Boston found strong evidence that nicotinamide may protect against nerve damage in the chronic progressive phase, when the most serious disabilities occur. Their findings appear in a cover article in the September 20 Journal of Neuroscience.
MS is a neurologic disorder in which nerve fibers, or axons, are damaged through inflammation, loss of their insulating myelin coating, and degeneration. This damage disrupts nerves' ability to conduct electrical impulses to and from the brain, causing such symptoms as fatigue, difficulty walking, pain, spasticity, and emotional and cognitive changes. Current treatments mainly protect against inflammation and myelin loss, but do not completely prevent long-term axon damage.
A team led by Shinjiro Kaneko, MD, a research fellow at Children's, and senior investigator Zhigang He, PhD, also from Children's, worked with mice that had an MS-like disease called experimental autoimmune encephalitis (EAE). Through careful experiments, they showed that nicotinamide protected the animals' axons from degeneration not only preventing axon inflammation and myelin loss, but also protecting axons that had already lost their myelin from further degradation.
Intriguingly, mice with EAE who received daily nicotinamide injections under their skin had a delayed onset of neurologic disability, and the severi
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Contact: James Newton
james.newton@childrens.harvard.edu
617-355-6420
Children's Hospital Boston
19-Sep-2006