Healthy Living

Research Reveals Exactly How Rogue Immune Cells Cause Multiple Sclerosis

How was the study conducted?

In order to see how Th1 and Th17 immune cells gain access to the neurons in MS and affect the central nervous system, Lutz and fellow colleagues conducted an experiment on a mouse version of MS and examined the blood-brain barrier. They genetically labelled the tight functions of the endothelial cells with a fluorescent protein so that they could see how the tight functions are involved in autoimmune encephalomyelitis – the experimental animal model of MS. The researchers found that the tight functions greatly worsened in the presence of Th17 cells, which presented themselves during the early stage of the disease.