MS patients less likely to have Alzheimer’s, study finds

MS appears protective against Alzheimer’s damage – Written by Margarida Maia, PhD

People with multiple sclerosis (MS) are about half as likely as those without the disease to have signs of the amyloid-beta plaques in the brain that are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study in the U.S.

“Our findings imply that some component of the biology of multiple sclerosis, or the genetics of MS patients, is protective against Alzheimer’s disease,” Matthew Brier, MD, PhD, the study’s first author and an assistant professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said in a university news story.

The reason behind the link remains unknown.
The study, “Unexpected Low Rate of Amyloid-[beta] Pathology in Multiple Sclerosis Patients,” was published as a brief communication in the Annals of Neurology.

In MS, the immune system mistakenly attacks myelin, the fatty sheath around nerve fibers in the brain and spinal cord, causing symptoms such as muscle weakness, poor vision, and numbness. It also can cause cognitive problems, including memory loss. These symptoms could be confused with symptoms of Alzheimer’s, the most common cause of dementia.

Seeking a link between MS and Alzheimer’s risk

Anne Cross, MD, an MS specialist at the university, found it interesting that her patients rarely developed Alzheimer’s, even though they were old enough to be at risk for it.

“I noticed that I couldn’t find a single MS patient of mine who had typical Alzheimer’s disease,” Cross said. “If they had cognitive problems, I would send them to the memory and aging specialists here at WashU Medicine for an Alzheimer’s assessment, and those doctors would always come back and tell me, ‘No, this is not due to Alzheimer’s disease.’”

Cross teamed up with Brier and other researchers to study whether people with MS have the same risk of developing Alzheimer’s as those without the condition.

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