Skin Creams Could Hold Key to MS Recovery

A team of scientists from Ohio in the US have found that two common, over-the-counter medications could help treat people with multiple sclerosis (MS) by rebuilding myelin in their bodies. Surprisingly, these drugs come in the form of miconazole, an antifungal cream for athlete's foot, and a steroid cream called clobetasol that treats eczema. Myelin is the fatty protein that protects nerves. In people with MS, the immune system mistakes myelin for a foreign body and attacks it. But when myelin becomes damaged, the nerves are exposed, and signalling problems can occur between the brain and the muscles. This can lead to loss of vision, fatigue, numbness, and paralysis, and can occasionally be fatal. Current medications for MS can slow or prevent the attack on the myelin, and there have been great advances in recent years in producing new drugs that can block the immune system and halt the disease's progression. Unfortunately, when the myelin is already damaged, there isn't a known way of repairing or replacing it. Until, maybe, now. Dr Paul Taser and his team from Case Western Reserve School of Medicine may have found an answer. Dr Taser explained that throughout the adult central nervous system, there are stem cells capable of repairing the damage caused by MS. "But until now," he added, "we had no way of directing them to act." The plan was for the team to screen a library of more than 700 existing medications to see if there were any capable of catalysing the body's own stem cells into replacing the lost myelin cells. From those 700 drugs, the team found two that are currently on the market, and early studies indicate that they can encourage new growth of myelin to coat and protect the nerves. The findings have been published in Nature. In the drugs' current form, they are applied as creams to the skin to alleviate athlete's foot and eczema. Their formulation would have to change to make them better target the nervous system, where MS strikes. But this is very much a "don't try this at home" scenario. Although the results are promising, experts have warned people away from self-medicating their MS because it could increase other health concerns instead. However, Dr Tesar said the team was working their hardest and fastest to get a safe and effective drug out there, on the market, for clinical use. Dr Robert Miller is one of the other authors of the study and explained that the results represent a fundamental change in the approach to treating MS and restoring life back to patients. "The drugs that we identified," he said, "are able to enhance the regenerative capacity of stem cells in the adult nervous system." MS Society Research Communications Manager Dr Sorrel Bickley explained that with more than 100,000 people living with MS in the UK, there is a huge unmet need for therapies capable of repairing myelin damage. "While this is an early study, it is exciting to think that there is now a growing list of potential myelin repair therapies," she said. "The next step will be to test these treatments in clinical trials," she added, "to establish whether they can bring benefits in slow or stopping the progression of MS."