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The recent discovery of a link between multiple sclerosis and the Epstein-Barr virus would allow a better response to this disease in the long term.
Treatments that aim to block the inflammation of multiple sclerosis have “made a lot of progress in the last ten years”and patient follow-up is “more individualized”told AFP the neurologist Jean Pelletier, of the French foundation Arsep (Aid for research on multiple sclerosis).
According to him, new advances could arise from a particularly important discovery, made in January by American researchers: the Epstein-Barr virus. This would be necessary for the development of multiple sclerosis, even if all infected people do not develop the disease.
An autoimmune disease
Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord). It causes a disruption of the immune system, which attacks myelin, the protective sheath of nerve fibers. Most often, it causes inflammatory flare-ups interspersed with calm phases.
The disease is very variable from one patient to another but can lead to sequelae. It is one of the common causes of disability in young adults. It is estimated that more than 2.8 million people are affected by this autoimmune disease worldwide, including around 110,000 people in France. Children and adolescents remain a minority of cases, but the disease may have started long before it can be diagnosed.
Vaccinate against the Epstein-Barr virus
The discovery of a link to the Epstein-Barr virus, which affects 95% of adults and is the cause of other diseases such as mononucleosis, suggests that most cases of multiple sclerosis could be prevented by stopping infection with this pathogen. Outraged “a better understanding of what may be involved in this multifactorial disease”the study does “to suppose that we could prevent multiple sclerosis from breaking out if we vaccinated children against the Epstein-Barr virus, knowing that we do not have a vaccine for the moment”according to Professor Pelletier.
“This famous Epstein-Barr virus, once contracted, it is hidden in our body in the B lymphocytes, themselves involved in the inflammatory reaction linked to multiple sclerosis. This could explain in particular that certain treatments targeting the B lymphocytes, monoclonal antibodies, have an extremely important efficacy against multiple sclerosis”he said.
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