A new study says that the drugs that are used to treat human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can also be used to treat Multiple Sclerosis (MS).
MS is the disease that affects the brain and the nervous system and can cause a number of symptoms such as cramps, spasms, nausea, depression and more. Scientists say that as the disease advances it can also cause permanent neurological problems.
The researcher highlights that HIV and MS are amongst the top medical conditions documented by researchers. However, there is just a single reported case where a patient with HIV and MS was treated with HIV antiretroviral therapies.
Researchers suggest a person infected with HIV has far less probability of getting MS. They say that the antiretroviral drugs that are used to treat HIV are the reason for the lowered risk.
Researchers at the University of Oxford, Queen Mary University of London and the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney, Australia, studied over 21,000 HIV-positive patients. These patients were receiving treatment across various hospitals in England between 1999 and 2011. The researchers compared the HIV-patients to five million non-HIV patients.
The findings of the study revealed that people who had HIV were 62 percent less likely to get MS.
"Mechanisms of this observed possibly protective association may include immunosuppression induced by chronic HIV infection and antiretroviral medications," per the authors of the study.
Dr. Emma Gray, who is the research communications manager at the MS Society, says that the study is valuable as well as fascinating as it is the first to demonstrate a noteworthy connection between HIV and a decreased risk of MS.
However, Dr. Gray also suggests that a lot of research is still needed to confirm "whether having HIV or being treated for HIV with antiretrovirals, or even a combination of the two," results in the lowered risk of an individual developing MS.
People with MS suffer a lot of pain and the new study gives a glimmer of hope for potential effective treatment of the disease in the future. Clinical trials are needed to determine the effect of HIV treatment drugs for MS patients and the report suggests that a trial for such a drug is already ongoing in a London-based lab.
The researchers of the study say that if the link is found between MS and drugs used to treat HIV, then it will lead to major advancements in the field of fighting MS.
The study has been published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry.
