ResearchSpeak: how to change your worldview in a day

The leukodystrophies have more in common with MS than I realised.  #ResearchSpeak #MSBlog #MSResearch

"Yesterday's primer meeting at Queen Square on the leukodystrophies, multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases was an eye-opener. It demonstrated to me that MS had more in common with a lot of other diseases than I thought. My presentation (embedded below) is about how we define MS as a disease and how different it is as a biological entity, but my most important slide is Slide-37, which tries to illustrate that many neurodegenerative diseases share common pathogenic pathways and these are the important pathways to target to try and modify the disease course of several diseases. I common theme to all of these diseases is innate immunity and the microglial response."


"I was also mortified to discover that certain patients with familial Alzheimer's  disease have many manifestations that look like MS. This has led me to ask the question of how many MSers have comorbid Alzheimer's disease or in fact have a familial form of Alzheimer's that mimics MS. They are unlikely to be undiagnosed - once you are diagnosed as having MS removing the label is difficult. Cognitive impairment is so common in MS anybody developing a dementia will simply have it put down to MS dementia rather than Alzheimer's or another form of dementia."

"The good news is that I have made several new contacts from the meeting and have many new ideas on how to take things forward with regard to new potential research proposals. It was clear from the number of discussions I had after the meeting is that I need to write up the 'Definition of MS as a Disease' as a paper. It provided a philosophical framework from which to work from. My problem is where will I get the time from?"


A Pretheoretical Definition of MS from Gavin Giovannoni

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