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Studies / Adjunct Research / Minocycline and Multiple Sclerosis
A team led by Prof. Ian Duncan, a neurology researcher at the University of Wisconsin, used minocycline to treat rats with a disease that mimics multiple sclerosis in humans. Animals treated with minocycline did not develop neurological dysfunction or had less severe courses of the disease. Duncan said that the results suggest the antibiotic could be
given to human patients who start to show signs of MS to forestall its progress.
MS is characterized by inflammation and eventual loss of the myelin sheaths that protect cells of the central nervous system, a process that
parallels the mechanism of RA and related diseases in the destruction of the body's connective tissue. Duncan believes the minocycline interferes with that process by inhibiting the activation of microglial cells that
assist the destruction.
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