Dietary supplement can help progressive MS on two fronts
N-acetylglucosamine relieves inflammation and can promote healing of myelin sheath, says UCI Health neurologist
IN THE NEWS: Multiple sclerosis (MS), a debilitating condition that can affect the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves, impacts almost 1 million Americans.
Treatments for the more common but unpredictable relapsing-remitting MS have expanded in recent years. Those for progressive MS, however, have lagged behind.
UCI Health multiple sclerosis specialist Dr. Michael Demetriou spoke to WebMD about his study of N-acetylglucosamine, a dietary supplement that has been found to ease inflammation and can potentially spur repair of the myelin sheath that encases the nerves.
“What’s different about the other therapies is that they only have myelin repair activity. They can’t treat the chronic active inflammation. I suspect you need both, that you need to first treat the chronic active inflammation and then be able to promote myelin repair.”
Demetriou is director of UCI Health Multiple Sclerosis Services, which is designated by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society as a Center for Comprehensive MS Care. He is also co-director of the Multiple Sclerosis Research Center.
Demetriou is a professor in the Department of Neurology at the UC Irvine School of Medicine and is the author or co-author of dozens of peer-reviewed publications.