Multiple sclerosis (MS) affects millions of people worldwide and so far there is no cure for this disease of the central nervous system. Damage to nerve fibers, also called axons, is responsible for the severity of the disease in patients and the course of MS. The protective layer of the axons, myelin, plays a key role in this process, and researchers at the University of Leipzig, the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Multidisciplinary Sciences and the University Medical Center Göttingen have now discovered that myelin, which was previously thought to be protective, can actually endanger the survival of the axons. The findings were recently published in the renowned journal Nature Neuroscience and open up a new perspective for future research approaches and therapeutic options for the disease.
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The images show cross-sectional electron micrographs of individual nerve fibers in MS brain biopsies. Axons sheathed with myelin (black rings), showing increasingly severe damage from 1 to 8. The spectrum ranges from accumulation of single cell components in otherwise still bright, intact axons (1) to advanced degeneration in dark irreversibly damaged axons (8). © University of Leipzig
