Source: UT Southwestern Medical Center
Posted: March 7, 2006
Summary:
Plaques that form around the nerve cells of people with multiple sclerosis are apparently what disable people with the disease. But partly developed reparative cells within the plaques provide hope for a treatment, a UT Southwestern physician reports in the New England Journal of Medicine. Even though the oligodendrocytes are damaged, there exists a reservoir of oligodendrocyte precursor cell, or OPCs, left over from development that could be activated to repair the damage, he said. The problem is how to trigger them to grow.
