Why Donate

Researchers need to study MS in the human brain
 

Despite over 150 years of study, the cause of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) remains unknown. MS affects about 20,000 people in Australia and the incidence is increasing by 7% each year. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, more than 140 Australian people with MS died in 2008. MS is a life long disease with a median survival of 30 years.

Although modern immunotherapy can usually suppress or prevent relapses early in the disease, there is no disease modifying treatment for people who suffer from the progressive forms of MS.

There are two main types of progressive disease:

• Secondary Progressive MS (SPMS) affects 50% of relapsing-remitting MS patients at 10 years from diagnosis. Here, people start off with attacks or relapses and then start to slowly deteriorate, irrespective of whether new relapses occur.

• Primary Progressive MS (PPMS) affects about 10% of people with a slow and steady deterioration from the onset of symptoms.

Understanding what causes disease progression is one of the major challenges for MS researchers.

Brain imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are useful for diagnosing MS and monitoring its disease activity, but recent studies have found that many changes in the brain and spinal cord due to MS are not detectable in MRI scans. To assess the effect of MS on the central nervous system (CNS), researchers need to study the cells, genes and proteins at the microscopic or molecular level in MS tissue.

Thirty years of animal studies have led to more and more effective drugs that suppress MS relapses and new lesion formation. However these medications only suppress and do not cure MS. This is because MS is a uniquely human disease and animal models do not accurately replicate MS as a disease, particularly its progressive forms.

Since human brain tissue is generally not available for study during life, researchers can only use post-mortem tissue donated by deceased MS patients who consented to their tissue being used for research before they passed away. Researchers need the highest quality and best characterised Tissue to work on. For this reason, the MSRA Brain Bank strongly encourages people with MS to prospectively register to donate post-mortem tissue by signing up as a MS Brain Donor ahead of time. Each brain donation is a precious and invaluable research resource that can bring us one step closer to curing MS. 

Please [click here] to express your interest in becoming a registered MS Brain Donor.