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"Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease that affects the cells of the brain and spinal cord. MS can cause various symptoms, including depression, pain, and impaired mobility. Although it is clear that MS is caused by cells of the immune system inappropriately attacking the cells of the brain and spinal cord, much remains unknown about the disease. For example, what triggers the immune cells to attack; what is the identity of the attacking cell(s); and what determines which part of the brain is attacked?

Answering these questions has been hampered by the lack of a suitable animal model of MS.

Now, a good, new mouse model of a form of MS -- known both as neuromyelitis optica (NMO) and Devic disease -- that only affects eyesight, limb movement, and bladder and bowel control is described in two independent papers to be published in the September issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Analysis of these mice indicated that disease was caused by cooperation between two types of immune cell known as B cells and T cells. The independent development of this mouse model of NMO by Andreas Holz and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology in Germany and Vijay Kuchroo and colleagues from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston should enable researchers to get more of a handle on the causes of both NMO and MS, thereby providing new avenues of research for the design of therapeutics to treat these debilitating diseases.

In an accompanying commentary, Richard Ransohoff from the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, discusses why he believes that the mouse model of NMO developed by these two groups will in fact yield more insight into the mechanisms of MS than the mechanisms of NMO.....
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