German researchers discover trigger for multiple sclerosis

For the first time scientists were able to demonstrate a correlation between blood coagulation system and the development of multiple sclerosis (MS), University of Duisburg-Essen announced on Wednesday.

Multiple sclerosis is an inflammatory disease of the central nervous system (CNS), mostly affecting young adults.

The disease typically progresses in stages, which may be accompanied by visual disturbances, paralysis or loss of balance, among others and lead to permanent disability, said the university.

If one has MS, the immune system attacks his own body and destroys certain parts of the nerve sheaths in brain and spinal cord, said Christoph Kleinschnitz, Director of the Department of Neurology at the University Hospital Essen.

"We could show for the first time that a specific component of the blood coagulation system, the blood coagulation factor XII (FXII), is jointly responsible for the MS development," he said.

His team showed that the FXII levels in the blood of MS patients during an acute stage of the illness is particularly high.

The study also showed that MS-diseased mice lacking FXII gene developed significantly fewer neurological breakdown symptoms compared to MS-diseased mice with the FXII gene, as the former had less interleukin-17A-producing T cells, which play a central role in the development of MS.

"Under a therapeutic point, it is very exciting and important to note that we were able to inhibit FXII by a new substance (the protein Infestin-4) in an animal model, which was originally obtained from a blood-sucking bug," explained Kleinschnitz.

The study results have been published in the journal Nature Communications in its latest issue. Endit