Surprising Pleiotropy of Nerve Growth Factor in the Treatment of Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis

The use of neurotrophic factors to treat multiple sclerosis (MS), a spontaneous inflammatory demyelinating disease of young adults, seems intuitively appealing: the process entails death of cellular constituents of the central nervous system (CNS), including oligodendroglia and neurons as well as damage to myelin (the hallmark of MS). It appears that demise of these neural cells, some of which are considered irreplaceable, results in part from the consequences of chronic inflammatory destruction of the myelin membrane. This conclusion comes from several lines of evidence: most persuasive is the axonal pathology observed in mutant mice deficient for the proteolipid protein of CNS myelin 1. By analogy, the ruin of demyelinated axons in the CNS of patients with MS is attributed in part to loss of the protective and trophic influences of myelin itself 2,3. It also...