However, for all the phenotpying they could not see anything that related to disease activity and the people that remained healthier had more memory T cells prior to stem cell therapy. So is it Protective Autoimmunity?
This blanket look-see without any thought what is important is great, but it means you "can't see the woods for the trees".
Earlier this year we have pinned out mast on the memory B cell and one would hope that if you look at this population there may be some change to correlate with disease activity.
Free read the paper CLICK
On reading the abstract I thought, bang there goes the Idea of B memory cell function relating to disease activity.
However, the study only examined 23 pwMS and of them only 7/23 relapsed, so we are looking for a wood made up of a few twigs, so are we going to find the wood in a thicket?
However, in this study they did not even look for the right wood as they only reported examination of T memory cell function.
So the B memory cell idea is not dead....yet.
But it shows us where the science interest is, and that is Th17, T reg and T cells, T cells, T cells.
I'll write to the authors so they can put me out of my misery with knowing what happens to B memory cells.
However, we know from rituximab studies that you can relapse and have no B cells in the blood so it is not a dead idea yet. Likewise if EBV is in the frame the memory cells will repopulate like crazy.
Importantly the main action may not be in the blood, but if new lesions are forming surely somethings happens.