A section stained for myelin of a 17 hour multiple sclerosis lesion that can be seen affecting the upper left quadrant of the medulla. Myelin sheaths stain palely but are still largely intact throughout most of the lesion. Arrows on the left indicate areas where the dominant pathological change was oligodendrocye apoptosis. Arrows on the right point to normal areas.

Devising a successful treatment for patients with multiple sclerosis requires a better understanding than we have at present concerning details of the inflammatory process that destroys nervous tissue in this disease. Our study shows that oligodendrocyte apoptosis in the absence of T cells contributes to tissue destruction in typical attacks of the disease.

The study is useful in the sense that it suggests that experimental allergic encephalomyelitis, a very important laboratory model of multiple sclerosis, needs some modification to model the human disease more appropriately.

An important reason why so little is understood concerning the nature of multiple sclerosis is the fact that patients rarely die during acute attacks. Our paper describes, for the first time, the changes that occur in the brain during the first one to two days of a new attack. The findings, which were unexpected, will have some influence on future research.

This particular study came about because of the dedication of families of individuals with multiple sclerosis allowing tissue to be obtained at autopsy and used for research.