EXPERIMENTS that go according to plan can be useful. But the biggest scientific advances often emerge from those that do not. Such is the case with a study just reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. When they began it, Hector DeLuca of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and his colleagues had been intending to examine the effects of ultraviolet (UV) light on mice suffering from a rodent version of multiple sclerosis (MS). By the project’s end, however, they had in their hands two substances which may prove valuable drugs against the illness.
Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease. This means it is caused by a victim’s immune system turning on and destroying parts of his own body. In the case of MS the targets of these attacks, which may continue for years, are the fatty sheaths that insulate nerve cells and thus help nervous impulses to propagate. Those suffering from MS are often weakened, and sometimes physically disabled by it, and may...Continue reading
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