A study of more than 22,000 people with multiple sclerosis has discovered the first genetic variant associated with faster progression of the disease, which opens the door to developing new treatments.
In the research, published this Wednesday by the journal ‘Nature’, carried out by more than 70 institutions around the world and run by the Universities of California San Francisco (USA) and Cambridge (United Kingdom), Yolanda Blanco, Sara Llufriu and Albert Saiz, researchers from the Neuroimmunology-Multiple Sclerosis Unit of the Clínic-IDIBAPS hospital in Barcelona, and Xavier Montalban, Manuel Comabella, Sunny Malhorta participated and Luciana Midaglia, from the Multiple Sclerosis Center of Catalonia (Cemcat).
In multiple sclerosis (MS) the system immune system mistakenly attacks the brain and the spinal cord, leading to flare-ups and long-term degeneration, known as progression.
Although there are effective treatments for outbreaks, neither can prevent progressionbut this finding of a genetic variant that increases the severity of the disease provides, according to the researchers, “the first real progress in understanding and combating this aspect of multiple sclerosis.”
Researchers have found that inheriting this genetic variant from both parents speeds up the time needed for a help to walk in almost four years and they believe that understanding how the variant exerts its effects on MS severity will pave the way for a new generation of treatments that can prevent disease progression.