A collaborative research team consisting of Professor Shohei Hattori of the University of Tokyo, Professor Hidetoshi Morita of Azabu University, Professor Sachiko Miyake of Juntendo University, and Director of the National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry (NCNP) Neurology Institute Takashi Yamamura Immunology Research Department is an intractable neurological disease. We investigated the intestinal bacteria of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and clarified the abnormality. MS is an autoimmune disease that has been increasing in recent years, but it is possible that abnormalities in the intestinal bacteria caused by westernization of the diet are involved in the onset.

MS is an intractable disease that causes neurological symptoms such as visual impairment, paralysis of limbs, sensory impairment, and higher brain dysfunction, and the neuropathy gradually progresses with repeated recurrence.Although it is a relatively rare disease in Japan, the number of patients has increased more than 30 times from about 1000 to nearly 2 in the past 10 years.There may be some environmental changes in the background, but the cause is not clear.

In recent years, it has been pointed out that intestinal bacteria may be involved in various autoimmune diseases.The research team hypothesized that changes in environmental factors such as eating habits might affect gut microbiota, leading to an increase in the number of patients, and analyzed gut microbiota in MS patients.When 20 Japanese patients with relapsing-remitting type who repeatedly developed symptoms (recurrence) and subsided (remission) were examined for intestinal bacteria during the relapsing period and compared with healthy Japanese, the diversity of intestinal bacteria was healthy. Although it was the same as that of the above, 19 species of bacteria were found to be decreasing and 2 species of bacteria were found to be increasing, and a remarkable decrease of Clostridium spp. Was observed.

The research team says that how the abnormalities of the intestinal bacteria discovered this time are related to the pathophysiology of MS is an issue for the future.In addition, by advancing the comparison with other autoimmune diseases, it is expected that the understanding of the relationship between autoimmune pathologies and intestinal bacteria will be deepened, which will lead to the elucidation of pathological conditions, diagnosis, and development of treatment methods.
The research results were published in the online version of PLOS ONE on September 2015, 9.

Source:[National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry] The world's first report of intestinal bacterial abnormalities in the intractable neurological disease "multiple sclerosis"

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