It's Been A Little While ...

I'm conscious that I haven't updated here for a little while. Been away, been busy and (worst of all), my internet connection at home is currently dead. Anyway a few interesting things to report in the interim. The first was a story in a free newspaper in the UK (Metro) which I wouldn't normally pay too much attention to. However I looked into it and the sources were reputable so here we go. The story is here but I don't know if it will work outside the UK - apologies if not - so I will quickly paraphrase.

Fantastic green moss!

Essentially there has been some recent research looking into ways to "reset" the immune system in people with auto-immune diseases like Multiple Sclerosis. People think CLIPPERS may also be an auto-immune disease (I am not a doctor). The scientists designed artificial "nano-particles" to attach to Myelin  (which is attacked by MS) and essentially distract the immune system. The chief scientist was quoted as saying "The aim was to provide a targeted treatment unlike immunosuppression which weakens the whole immune system." The research paper details are here. Now this has only been tried in mice under very controlled conditions so far, so it is early days. My limited understanding is also that you have to have a very good understanding of the disease mechanism before you can design the appropriate particles - this is something we don't have currently in CLIPPERS. Still, with so few of us, it is encouraging that these kind of generic technologies might one day provide some hope for treatment of a whole range of diseases. 

Interestingly the BBC had another angle about MS recently, which also concerned "resetting" the immune system, this time using an existing drug which has already been licenced for use in other diseases. This kind of low-cost translation of treatments across diseases is also something which can provide at least a modicum of hope to us reluctant members of the CLIPPERS club.

Read other articles in this series at Living With CLIPPERS.

Living With CLIPPERS by Bill Crum is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Out and About

I've been away at a Parkinson's disease conference for a few days. I know (or at least knew) next to nothing about Parkinson's but did some image analysis on one of the featured papers. It was a really interesting meeting even if it was impenetrable to me in places. Parkinson's has been around for a long time - it was characterised by James Parkinson in 1817 - and affects a lot of people, but there is no cure as such, even now, and a limited range of treatments. Listening to the various talks at the meeting it seemed to me that a lot is known in detail about a lot of different aspects of the disease but the full picture is still not understood. Imagine trying to figure out the plot of Lord of the Rings by randomly sampling a few pages at a time from the three books. After you've read 50 sets of pages or so (and if you can put them in the right order) you will have some idea what is going on in certain parts of the story but you will still have a very restricted outlook on the whole; it will take many more pages to reflect the detail and give a true understanding. 

Now CLIPPERS is a relatively new condition (or at least newly identified) but it seems possible (I am not a doctor) that CLIPPERS will fit somewhere into the existing framework of understanding of auto-immune diseases. We already have treatments for CLIPPERS which can alleviate and suppress the symptoms at least some of the time and/or if used early enough. However, as far as I know, no-one has yet figured out the mechanisms, causes or triggers of the disease that will be necessary for a cure. I think the good news is that we are starting from a fairly advanced level of understanding about  related conditions so maybe CLIPPERS will be a missing part of a bigger puzzle ...

Read other articles in this series at Living With CLIPPERS.

Living With CLIPPERS by Bill Crum is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.