Excersing mice do better

Pryor WM, Freeman KG, Larson RD, Edwards GL, White LJ. Chronic exercise confers neuroprotection in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis.J Neurosci Res. 2014 Dec. doi: 10.1002/jnr.23528. [Epub ahead of print]

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease that affects the CNS, resulting in accumulated loss of cognitive, sensory, and motor function. This study evaluates the neuropathological effects of voluntary exercise in mice with experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), an animal model of MS. Two groups of C57BL/6J mice were injected with an emulsion containing myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein and then randomized to housing with a running wheel or a locked wheel. Exercising EAE mice exhibited a less severe neurological disease score and later onset of disease compared with sedentary EAE animals. Immune cell infiltration and demyelination in the ventral white matter tracts of the lumbar spinal cord were significantly reduced in the EAE exercise group compared with sedentary EAE animals.  Sedentary animals with EAE displayed a greater loss of α-motor neurons compared with EAE animals exposed to exercise. These findings provide evidence that voluntary exercise results in reduced and attenuated disability, reductions in autoimmune cell infiltration, and preservation of axons and motor neurons in the lumbar spinal cord of mice with EAE


This is study aims to addresses a question that ProfG has posed is whether mice that exercise more do better or worse when they get their MS-like disease.  Do they drive progression because nerves are working harder and make them more vulnerable to damage? 

In this study the mice running around more accumulated less deficits than the couch potato mice, so exercise is good. 

Well we know this already and if you exercise in whatever capacity you can on balance there are health benefits.

ProfG will argue that in this study the mice did not have disease and demyelination when the exercise was initiated so it would not properly address his question maybe that is the next experiment.

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