Many of us were intrigued when study results were announced in the autumn of last year linking gut bacteria to multiple sclerosis (MS) susceptibility.
This wasn’t the first study into possible connections between what is known as the “gut microbiome” and neurological conditions. It was, however, another important step in understanding bacteria and how MS develops.
I Wanted to Know More About Gut Bacteria and MS
As is often the case with me and such things, this turned out to be just the tip of a very large gut bacteria iceberg.
A great deal of thanks must go to Timothy Coetzee, PhD, the chief advocacy, services, and science officer for the National MS Society, who helped me find my way through the maze of information on the topic.
First, a full report on the study in question can be found on the University of California in San Francisco website for those interested in this specific paper.
Furthermore, the National MS Society published an in-depth article on MS and the gut microbiome in the Spring 2020 issue of Momentum.
New Research Focuses on Clostridium perfringens
My interest in the story was further stoked when another paper was published, this time in the February 2023 Journal of Clinical Investigation. This study revealed a specific bacterium, Clostridium perfringens (C. perfringens), was a target of keen interest.
For those who may have taken a food safety course in the past, you might remember that C. perfringens is a major factor in foodborne illnesses.
This study showed that the gut of a person with MS, compared with that of control subjects, had C. perfringens “much more frequently, and with greater abundance, than people without MS.”
The Role of Epsilon Toxin
With more bacteria comes more bacteria waste as well.
One waste product of C. perfringens is a type of toxin known as epsilon toxin. These toxins are thought to be a potential catalyst that causes our immune systems to become destructive to myelin.
To prove this, researchers introduced this epsilon toxin into the gut of healthy mice and — would you believe it? — it induced MS-like symptoms and disease.
Indeed, the MS-like disease in mice induced by epsilon toxin was found to more closely resemble MS damage to the brain and spinal cord in humans (and the symptoms more closely resembled MS symptoms) than the experimental autoimmune illness encephalomyelitis (EAE).
Sometimes called the MS mouse model, EAE is a condition induced in mice to study MS.
The International MS Microbiome Study
With all this relatively new research coming out in rather rapid succession (rapid by research standards), one might be concerned that the discipline of MS study is running before it learns how to walk. That’s what interested me most.
And that’s how I found the International MS Microbiome Study (iMSM).
iMSM’s pledge is to “investigate the role of gut bacteria (microbiota) and their genes (microbiome) in multiple sclerosis (MS) and use that understanding to design a clinical trial that will evaluate an entirely new approach to the treatment of multiple sclerosis.”
Even they admit that the field of microbiome research is in its “infancy,” so getting the science up and walking was their first priority. Now it appears that the baby is at least toddling.
With an international body of scientists and academics focused on a concerted effort to look at gut microbiome and MS in a systematic and detailed fashion, I believe the next few years will prove to be pivotal in this vein of not only multiple sclerosis research, but for many other neurological and autoimmune conditions as well.
Who knows, perhaps “healthy gut, healthy brain” will be an important piece in puzzling together the cause of (and, fingers crossed, a cure for) multiple sclerosis.
Wishing you and your family the best of health.
Cheers,
Trevis
