As the story goes, nearly 80 years ago on the Faroe Islands – a stark North Atlantic archipelago 200 miles off the coast of Scotland — a neurologic epidemic may have washed, or rather convoyed, ashore.

Before 1940 the incidence of multiple sclerosis on the Faroes was near, if not, zero, according to the tantalizing lore I recall from medical school. Yet in the years following British occupation of the islands during World War II, the rate of MS rose dramatically, leading many researchers to assume the outbreak was caused by some unknown germ transmitted by the foreign soldiers.

We now know that MS is not infectious in the true sense of the word. It is not contagious in the way, say, the flu is.

But infection does likely play a role in MS.

As may be the case in Alzheimer’s disease, it’s looking more and more like MS strikes when infectious, genetic and immune factors gang up to eventually impair the function of neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Researchers are hoping to better understand this network of influences to develop more effective ways to treat MS, and perhaps prevent it in the first place.

Read the full article here