|
Multiple Sclerosis Questions and Answers
|
|
While it is true that Multiple Sclerosis is an autoimmune disease, the cause of this illness has not yet been discovered. The short answer for the above question is that there is no link between certain immune cells and multiple sclerosis. However, MS is an autoimmune disease. This means that the body attacks itself, or more specifically, one’s autoimmune system attacks systems that it normally shouldn’t.
The good news is that stem cell therapy has shown some great results so far. Basically, in a person with MS the autoimmune system doesn’t work properly. So, the easiest solution would be to erase one’s immune system and replace it with a new one. If it’s fairly easy to “delete” an immune system with chemotherapy, until recently, the problem was in building a new immune system. Stem cells do that. Basically, stem cells are extracted from the MS sufferer, stored, and after the sufferer’s immune system was erased with chemo, the stem cells are inserted and left to develop a new immune system. Results are promising, but this therapy is not yet FDA approved.
|