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home / 世界杯决赛2022

q+a: sask. doc breaks down ms discovery

the province has some of the highest rates of ms in the country.

by nick pearce
published apr 29, 2022
read time 3 minute read
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read time 3 minute read
join the conversation
a discovery exposing a crucial link in multiple sclerosis is promising new inroads for treatment. a study published in the journal science says researchers have found that the epstein-barr virus (ebv) — which causes mononucleosis, commonly known as mono — acts as an environmental trigger for ms.
that holds significant promise for treating ms patients in saskatchewan, according to dr. michael levin, saskatchewan multiple sclerosis clinical research chair and professor of neurology at the university of saskatchewan. the province has some of the highest rates of ms in the country.
levin spoke with postmedia about what the discovery means and the future impact it could have for local ms patients.
q: why is this study so interesting?
a: i’ve been seeing ms patients for 25 or 30 years. one of the first patients i saw was in her early 40s when she got mono, which is uncommon. most people get it in their teens. epstein barr virus causes mononucleosis. three months later, she went to the emergency room with newly diagnosed multiple sclerosis.
how much meaning does that have? those kinds of patients resonate with me. this group has been studying epstein barr virus as a trigger for ms since 2000. they thought they saw in the medical literature that there was a risk of getting ms if you were infected with ebv as an adult.
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q: how did this study work?
a: they did a number of studies over the last 20 years, but what makes this study unique is that they studied so many patients. about 95 per cent of us have evidence of infection with epstein barr virus. so they had to find people that were negative. over the length of the study, 34 out of 35 people who had ms were positive for epstein barr virus.
why don’t we say causation? ms is complex. there must be something else. part of that is genetic predisposition. another risk factor for ms is low amount of sunlight and low amount of vitamin d. it’s a very small risk compared to ebv, but that may be related to why there’s a higher rate in saskatchewan.
and what we don’t know is what percentage of people in saskatchewan with ms are infected with epstein barr virus. that’s a study that is doable, but it would take at least five or 10 years.
q: what does this mean for people living with ms in saskatchewan?
a: so there’s three ways that this information is going to help people in saskatchewan. understanding another environmental factor, like epstein barr virus, i can see a day where we might be able to give an antiviral that kills the virus early in disease, so it doesn’t get worse.
maybe we can even make a vaccine to prevent it from happening altogether. or the third part is as we understand how epstein barr virus contributes to ms, we have some clues from the lab and we might be able to design specific therapies to prevent the immune attack.
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