There are many different diseases of the nervous system, including Parkinson’s, tumors of the nervous system, Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis, to only name a few.
Multiple sclerosis, also known as MS, is the most common cause of neurologic disability, it is a autoimmune disease, which happens when the body mistakes its own self cells as antigens and attacks them. In the case of MS the body attacks the central nervous system. It is usually diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 40 and some symptoms are mild including numbness in the limbs or very severe like paralysis or loss of vision. People who have the disease produce autoreactive T lymphocytes that participate in the formation of inflammatory lesions along the myelin sheath of nerve fibers. The cerebrospinal fluid of patients with active MS contain activated T lymphocytes that infiltrate the brain and cause the characteristic inflammatory lesions which destroys the myelin. This breakdown in the myelin sheath leads to numerous neurological problems (Kindt Goldsby and Osborne, 2007).
Like most autoimmune diseases, the cause of MS is not well known, though some studies have proposed a link between MS and infection by certain viruses. It is known that some viruses can cause demyelinating diseases so it is easy to speculate that a viral infection plays a role in the development of MS (Kindt et al, 2007).
