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Has anyone else come across this article. I find it very interesting, but am wondering if as with so many other possible treatment/cures/causes etc. this is old news that wont really go anywhere?

Full Text:

People with early signs of multiple sclerosis who were treated with a vaccine used to prevent tuberculosis were less likely to get sick than patients who weren’t vaccinated, according to an early study.

Researchers recruited 73 people who had a first episode suggestive of multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that can be difficult to diagnose. Five years later, almost 60 percent of those given the TB vaccine hadn’t developed multiple sclerosis compared with a third of the group that received a placebo instead, according to a study today in the journal Neurology.

The research supports the hygiene hypothesis, which suggests people have become so clean they suppress natural development of the immune system, leading to a surge in diseases in which these infection-fighting cells attack healthy tissue in the body, said Dennis Bourdette, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study. The tuberculosis vaccine may wake the regulatory arm of the immune system, helping to steer the body’s killer cells away from the neurons it attacks in MS.

“The interesting thing was that the single injection affected the course of the recipients for up to five years after they received it,” Bourdette, the chairman of neurology at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, said in a telephone interview.

About 2.3 million people worldwide have multiple sclerosis, according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, a patient advocacy group. The disease destroys neurons when the immune system mistakenly attacks the protective coating on nerve fibers, disrupting the body’s communications. Eventually, this leads to blurred vision, poor balance and coordination, problems with speaking, tremors, fatigue and paralysis.

Study Results

In the study, patients received either a Bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccine or a placebo. Both groups were given interferon, a standard MS treatment, for 12 months. After 18 months, patients took disease-modifying therapies as prescribed by their doctors. Fewer people who received the vaccine were diagnosed with MS and more of them didn’t have to take disease-modifying drugs than those in the control group, said the researchers led by Giovanni Ristori, from the Center for Experimental Neurological Therapies at the University of Rome.

Though the approach looks promising, the BCG vaccine probably isn’t safe for widespread use, Bourdette said. It isn’t recommended for use against TB in the U.S. because the risk of TB infection is low. The vaccine contains live bovine tuberculosis bacteria, which can cause infections after an injection.

MS Treatment

That’s particularly true for people whose immune system is suppressed, he wrote in the editorial published with the study. The typical treatment for multiple sclerosis involves suppressing the immune system, which means that MS patients on drugs may be more at risk for a TB infection.

BCG shouldn’t be used off-label to treat MS, since its safety is unknown, he wrote. It may be safer to use a vaccine with dead TB bacteria, or only duplicating parts of the bacteria for a new vaccine.

It’s not clear how the BCG vaccine works in multiple sclerosis, Bourdette said. It may awaken regulatory parts of the immune system, stopping rogue cells from attacking myelin. It may also lower inflammation, which can damage neurons, too.

Previous studies have shown that stimulating the immune system with parasites also had protective effects. A 2007 study in Argentina found that MS patients who were infected with schistosoma mansoni, a parasite found in poor countries, suffered fewer relapses that those who weren’t. A group of five MS patients who were dosed with pig whipworm eggs had fewer signs of MS while being treated, compared with before and after treatment, according to a 2011 study published in Multiple Sclerosis Journal.

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So the way to get healthy is to shoot a bunch of chemicals in your body and destroy your immune system. You really think formaldehyde, mercury, antifreeze, aluminum and various other chemicals are going to prevent MS? Some think these chemicals cause much of the MS we see today. This is just something the vaccine companies want you to believe. Listening to these government supported studies is why we have all the sick people today. They are not selling enough of these poisons so they come out with a study. It is so sick what they are doing to the young people just to make a dollar.

My hypothesis: excess insulin (hyperinsulinemia) plays a major role in MS, as developed in my initial post: http://www.thisisms.com/forum/general-discussion-f1/topic1878.html "Insulin – Could This Be the Key?"

The use of the BCG vaccine as a potential MS treatment has been around for several years. Unfortunately as the vaccine is out of patent there is no money in undertaking a clinical trial.

Notwithstanding the concerns about what else might be in the vaccine I would suggest the use of this is probably along similar lines as Helminthic Therapy in that a decoy is being provided to distract the immune system from attacking myelin.

Contrary to what others may have said Vaccines do not destroy the immune system - they simply give a sub clinical dose / attenuated dose to allow the immune systems early warning system to identify the pathogen in the future. Id consider vaccines as an immune system training aid.

Although I do agree with the fact that pharma companies do not always have our best interests at heart, I do also think this May have some validity. Yes I agree vaccines have some risks, but realistically what doesn't in this world.

As someone who is in CIS I really do find this interesting and only wish it in wouldn't take so long to move some of this research forward. This is inevitably due to the fact that there is no serious money to be made from this by big pharma.

Just like I believe that some people can benefit greatly from lifestyle changes, I also believe others can benefit from medication. I'm no expert in MSa but what's I have seen to date tells me that it's simply hard to treat let alone cure because I think the disease acts very differently in each person. Medical "breakthroughs" are always based on find a new way of diagonising/treating/curing that can be applied to all. Unfortunately I'm not sure that's ever going to be the case with MS.

Given that I was born and raised inn the UK I actually received the BCG vaccine when I was a young boy. However if I had to look for relation between vaccines and MS...well I'm much more inclined to look at the hepatitis B vaccine that I had approx 3 years ago.

Dr. Bergman explains how vaccines work. If you just take it from a common sense point of view. Does it make sense that injecting neurotoxins in the blood stream is a good thing? Mercury is a known neurotoxin so why would anyone with MS want to inject this in the body? Doesn't make sense.

Researchers recruited 73 people who had a first episode suggestive of multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that can be difficult to diagnose

Problem is nobody as ever proven that MS is an autoimmune disease yet the vast majority of treatments today interfere with the patient's immune system in the hope of helping the patient. And we know how hugely varied the results have been.

The tuberculosis vaccine may wake the regulatory arm of the immune system, helping to steer the body’s killer cells away from the neurons it attacks in MS.

Again, in recent years, researchers are thinking that some other inflammatory action totally unrelated to the immune system is happening first and the patient's immune system is reacting to that.

In the study, patients received either a Bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccine or a placebo. Both groups were given interferon, a standard MS treatment, for 12 months. After 18 months, patients took disease-modifying therapies as prescribed by their doctors.

So the patients were given interferon as well and with results all over the map from this drug for many years, we are suppose to trust the results from this research! Hmmm.

Dr. Mercola talks about the herd immunity theory of vaccines and why it may not work. The sad part of vaccines is one of the side effects is DEATH. We do not see to much posting about this because dead people do not post on the board. So sad when a mother gets a vaccine for her child and the child dies. Getting the flu is not the worst thing that can happen. I have seen studies saying vitamin D is better at prevention of the flu than the vaccine. I have seen post where people think a vaccine resulted in their MS. The theory that vaccines can cause MS is not proven but why take a chance? When I look at the ingredients they are not something I want to put in my blood stream. Not good to stress your immune system. You keep putting poison in the body you may never get better.

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