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Comment by vvpan | Hacker News Reader

While some searching might clear it up, the fact that the article doesn't even mention which type of MS they are talking about is a little vexing.

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Can you expand on this for people not familiar with the types of MS that might exist?

I have an aunt with MS and got excited by this article, but still wasn't aware that it might be limited to a subset?

Apparently there are multiple multiple scleroses.

Basicly just different severities. Afaik no clear indications that they have different causes, so I don't understand the reason for OPs objection. I would assume their results are spanning all types, or it would have been spesifically mentioned. Most research seems to be done on the more severe type, tho.

> They put Acinetobacter and Akkermansia bacteria into samples of healthy blood. The microbes increased the kind of cells that activate immune attack (they’re called T helper cells) and decreased the kind (regulatory T cells) that suppress excessive immune responses, including autoimmune attacks as in MS.

As far as I understand the article it seems like they have replicated the effect MS has on the T-cells, and that is not subtype spesific. If they could inhibit this effect it would be a fix across all subtypes, even if it doesn't fix the underlying problem.

You might also want to have her CSF independently tested for nematode worms. (what I mean by this is to put it under a microscope). it surely won't hurt, as some pathologists (although not published yet in the medical literature AFAIK) are finding them in all the samples they have tested for.

More information: https://youtu.be/aTPU87CKQLQ?t=6m30s

If this proves to be the case for your aunt, the good news is that anti-helmintics like Ivermectin, could efficiently treat the underlying cause.

You also might benefit from performing Metagenomic tests ( such as Digital Culture by Karius - kariusdx.com) to look for insidious pathogens that might play a role in her illness.

In other words, there are many different things that might cause the symptomatology described as "Multiple Sclerosis", Lyme disease actually being one of them, https://youtu.be/Fy0ViOX7xNk?t=9m37s

Primary progressive MS (PPMS), Relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS), etc.

So, the more precise description of different types you could read about, say, on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_sclerosis#Types. To describe it briefly, though - there are different types, some appear later in life some earlier, some show up sporadically, while some are constant and get progressively worse. The issue is that, from what I know, there is nobody who can even tell if they are the same pathology, just that they have some similar symptoms.

> The issue is that, from what I know, there is nobody who can even tell if they are the same pathology, just that they have some similar symptoms.

I have an auto-immune disease (ulcerative colitis) and the situation is the same for me. Doctors always tell me they can never be entirely sure that's what it is. But I'm sure there are plenty of diagnosis are generalizations about symptoms rather than root cause.

We simply don't know what causes plenty of diseases.

Side-note: given that my aunt has MS while me and multiple of my other aunts have an IBD (irritable bowel diseases: chrohns, colitis) on one side of the family, there seems to be a connection between UC and MS as both are auto-immune related:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17894769

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