MS vaccine passes safety tests

Source: Healthcare Digital

Date :14/08/2007 09:33:04

Canadian scientists have announced that a vaccine designed to tackle multiple sclerois has passed initial safety tests.

It is hoped that the BHT-3009 jab might reduce the damaging immune system attacks which cause the disease.

Archives of Neurology reported that early checks were carried out on 30 patients at Montreal Neurological Institute.

A British expert said that the way was now clear for more extensive trials.

DNA vaccines are already used in healthy patients to protect against infectious diseases, but the latest idea is to give them to patients with an existing disease such as MS.

The Montreal researchers said they thought their study was the first time that a DNA vaccine had been given to someone with an "auto-immune" disease.

Animal experiments have suggested that it might be possible to tweak the body's immune system so that the unwanted self-harming response becomes smaller, slowing the progress of the disease.

The small-scale Montreal trial - using 30 MS patients - was designed to check that the vaccine would not cause any unexpected side-effects in advance of large-scale trials.

The scientists also checked to see if there was any evidence in the tiny number of patients who received the vaccine that it was having an effect on their disease.

They found some differences in MRI scans of the brains of vaccine patients, and blood tests revealed a lower number of immune system cells targeting the proteins in the nerve fibre sheath.

However, the trial was too small and too short to show whether, in the longer term, this might translate to a slowing of the illness or a reduction of symptoms.

There is no cure for MS, which happens when the body's immune system launches an attack on the tissue that surrounds nerve fibres, causing irreversible and worsening symptoms such as weakness and vision loss.

August 14 2007