A biomarker can be used to detect months in advance whether an MS patient is about to experience an attack. This could be a decisive advance in the treatment of autoimmune diseases.
For people with multiple sclerosis it is often an anxious wait and hope: Will the disease remain calm? Or will it strike again soon? The autoimmune disease, in which the immune system attacks the protective coverings of the nerves, usually occurs in episodes. After weeks, months or years in which patients do not notice any deterioration, the MS suddenly progresses again and impairments in feeling and movement occur. When this would happen again was, however, unpredictable. But a work from Basel and San Francisco published in the journal Jama Neurology now shows: The development can be detected in the blood months, sometimes even years in advance, because by then there are already increasing numbers of building blocks of destroyed nerve cells floating around in it, the light chains of neurofilaments (NfL ).