MS News That Caught My Eye Last Week: Myelin repair, and Diets High in Fat or Salt

Common Allergy Treatment Restores Protective Neuron Coating in MS, Trial Suggests

This is the kind of news we all hope to hear. A treatment that will repair our frayed “wires” and, in doing so, restore some of the function that MS has stolen from us. This is only a Phase 2 study, and it only involved the optic nerve, but as one researcher says: “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a therapy has been able to reverse deficits caused by MS.” It’s worth reading Magdalena Kegel‘s article all the way to the end, because it explains how the drug was chosen and why this study is a hopeful first step.

Scientists have been trying to find a way to restore a protective covering around nerve cells whose loss leads to the neuron damage associated with multiple sclerosis.

A team at the University of California, San Francisco may have found a way to do it. And perhaps surprisingly, the possible solution is an over-the-counter allergy drug.

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Fat Intake Increases Risk of Children with MS Having a Relapse, Study Suggests

There have been many studies over the years that link diet to MS. This study targets children but its results would seem to apply to all of us: Fat is bad. Saturated fat is very bad. Vegetables, on the other hand, are good.

Diet can play an important role in whether children with relapsing multiple sclerosis have a relapse, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco argue.

Their study demonstrated that a diet with a lot of fat increases the risk of a youngster having a relapse by 56 percent, with saturated fat tripling the risk. Eating a lot of vegetables, on the other hand, cuts the risk in half, the team said.

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Diet High in Salt Does Not Increase MS Risk, Large-scale Study Suggests

Here’s another diet-related study. This one looked at salt. Using too much salt can be harmful to our bodies in many ways, but according to this research, it doesn’t have an impact on whether someone will develop MS. Whew! That’s certainly a relief.

A higher intake of dietary sodium, most often in the form of salt, does not increase the risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS), Norwegian researchers concluded after analyzing data from more than 175,000 women.

Their findings counter earlier evidence from experimental studies in cells and MS mouse models that suggested sodium may be a disease trigger.

The report, “No association between dietary sodium intake and the risk of multiple sclerosis,” appeared in the journal Neurology.

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