The errant behavior of the cells in question — known as "B cells" — is viewed as key to the development of this chronic and disabling nervous system disease, commonly called MS.

The new therapy’s potential is only in the early stages of exploration, cautions an international study team comprised of researchers from the United States, Canada, Switzerland and the Netherlands, in the report published in the Nov. 1 online edition of The Lancet.

via New Multiple Sclerosis Therapy Promising in Early Trial.

The study, published in the May 24 issue of the journal Neurology, also said the deficiency is due primarily to differences in climate and geography.

"MS is not as common in African-Americans as it is in whites, although the disease tends to be more severe in African-Americans," study author Dr. Ari J. Green, of the University of California, San Francisco, said in an American Academy of Neurology news release.

via MS in Blacks Linked to Low Vitamin D.

via New Pill for MS Shows Promise in Clinical Trial.

(HealthDay News) — As the debate over medical marijuana use continues, a new study among multiple sclerosis patients — who often use the drug to relieve pain and muscle spasticity — adds to the argument that smoking pot clouds thinking skills.

Canadian researchers studied two groups of 25 people between the ages of 18 and 65 with MS, an autoimmune disease that attacks the central nervous system and can lead to paralysis, cognitive problems, incontinence and a host of other sensory and functional deficits. One group used marijuana heavily, while the other group reported no marijuana use for many years.

Patients using pot performed significantly worse on cognitive tests measuring attention, thinking speed, executive function and visual perception of spatial relationships between objects, the study authors said. Users were also twice as likely to be classified as globally cognitively impaired, meaning they failed at least two of 11 various assessments.

The study is published in the March 29 issue of Neurology.

via Medical Marijuana Might Slow Thinking Among MS Patients.

The researchers pushed the stem cells to grow into critical nervous system support cells called oligodendrocytes, according to a report released Thursday.
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The study, which tracked the medical records of more than 20,000 MS patients for 35 years, “found that they had some 10 percent decreased overall cancer risk compared with those without the disease,” said lead researcher Dr. Shahram Bahmanyar, from the Clinical Epidemiology Unit at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

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