Autoimmune diseases cannot currently be cured, only treated, and this is also true for neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder, which affects the central nervous system. A Kobe University study of how the treatment acts on the immune system shows that it shifts the balance of types of immune cells. This finding may represent a step toward the development of personalized medicine for autoimmune diseases.
An autoimmune disease is the body's immune system turning against parts of the body itself. Neuromyelitis optica disorder spectrum, or NMOSD, is one of them and it causes inflammation of the central nervous system, leading to vision and sensory loss, weakness and bladder dysfunction. The condition, which sometimes flares up in waves, has a treatment consisting of blinding the immune system to inflammation-promoting signals.
But its biological action is broad and so it is also not understood why it doesn't work in some patients and how to effectively ascertain which is the case. The Kobe University neurologist CHIHARA Norio specializes on the disease and recently wondered: " B cells are a type of key immune cells that respond to inflammatory signals, and in autoimmune diseases like NMOSD, they produce antibodies against part of the body itself, exacerbating the condition. Therapies that inhibit inflammatory signals were therefore expected to change the activity of B cells in NMOSD.
Since we observed that B cells were still present in the blood of patients after treatment, we dec.
