It has been a long time coming, but a new gene linked to multiple sclerosis has finally been identified – the first in 30 years.
In MS, the body’s own immune system attacks and destroys myelin, the fatty insulation on the brain’s communication wires. Simon Gregory at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, and colleagues focused on a gene on chromosome 5 called IL7R and found that one of its variants increases the risk of MS by 20 to 30 per cent. The variant seems to affect the production of interleukin 7 (IL7), an immune-system enhancer, causing fewer…
