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Doctors may have failed to cure multiple sclerosis because they have been treating the wrong disease, a group of scientists has warned. A trio of neurologists claims in the latest edition of New Scientist the conventional wisdom about MS is based on a different condition altogether, explaining why no cure has been found for the disease.

The group argues that instead of the century-old belief that immune cells attack a protein that insulates nerves, MS is caused by support cells called astrocytes malfunctioning, possibly due to a combination of environmental and genetic factors.

They claim the original animal experiments conducted in the late 1800s were critically flawed, with researchers wrongly believing they had induced an "animal model" of multiple sclerosis when in fact the two conditions were very different.

"There are huge differences and they've been skipped over," Glasgow University's Peter Behan told New Scientist. Among these is that the so-called animal version of MS either kills or permanently disables animals whereas MS "comes and goes" and there are also big differences in the level of inflammation. Despite this, almost all MS treatments have been based on the animal version.

"Not a single human has been cured using these approaches," Dr Behan said. Dr Behan and Abhijit Chaudhuri from Glasgow University and Bart Roep from Leiden University Medical Centre will publish their views in next week's Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

Story filed: 23:25 Wednesday 13th November 2002

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