Replacing fatty acids may fight MS

[weakmagneto]

Patients lack key lipids that fend off inflammation and nerve damage
By Nathan Seppa
Science News
Web edition : June 6, 2012, 3:57 pm

By delving into the components of protective nerve coatings that get damaged in multiple sclerosis, scientists have identified a handful of lipid molecules that appear to be attacked by an immune system run amok.

Bolstering the supply of these lipids might help preserve these nerve coatings and, in the process, knock back the inflammation that contributes to their destruction, researchers report in the June 6 Science Translational Medicine.

In MS patients, rogue antibodies assault myelin, the fatty sheath that insulates nerves and facilitates signaling. Inflammation exacerbates the attack on myelin and the cells that make it. But other details of MS, including the roles of myelin lipids, have been less clearly understood.

“I think this is a very good study,” says Francisco Quintana, an immunologist at Harvard Medical School. “Overall, there are not many papers on lipids in MS. Technically, they are challenging and require a lot of expertise.”

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic ... y_fight_MS

[BioWizard]

Is it me or is this completely counterintuitive? You'd think that adding more of the molecules that are triggering the autoimmune reaction would exacerbate the condition, not mitigate it. Or am I missing something? Maybe they used modified forms of the lipids which are invisible to the auto-reactive immune system? I bet I'd know right away if I weren't so lazy and just pulled out the paper and read it...