POINTERS to possible drug treatments for multiple sclerosis have come from an experiment in which extra doses of a natural hormone relieved symptoms of the disease in mice.
In MS, the immune system attacks and destroys the fatty myelin sheath around nerve cells, causing physical and cognitive disability. Myelin is produced by cells called oligodendrocytes, whose development is controlled by the hormone triiodothyronine, which is made in the thyroid.
To see if extra doses of this hormone might help to “remyelinate” nerves, Said Ghandour at the Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg, France, and colleagues gave mice a chemical that destroys…
