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Here are the summaries of the 2024-2025 SPRINT team projects:

Reviewing the Law

What’s New in the 2024 MS Diagnosis Guidelines—and Why It Matters

SPRINTers: Aysika Das, Jake Neufeld, Lies Van Horebeek

SPRINT mentor: Dr. Raphael Schneider
SPRINT Community Partner: Jessica Kirbyson

Lay summary: Multiple sclerosis, or MS, is often called a “snowflake” disease because no two people experience it the same way. These differences between people make it hard for doctors to diagnose, especially since other diseases can look similar. To help address this, experts created the McDonald criteria—a set of guidelines that help neurologists diagnose MS correctly and as early as possible. These criteria are updated every few years to reflect new research. The latest update in 2024 introduced two major changes. First, people who have signs of MS on their brain scans but don’t feel sick can now be diagnosed with MS. In the past, neurologists would have diagnosed these people with Radiologically Isolated Syndrome, or RIS. People with RIS may or may not have MS symptoms in the future. Second, the updated criteria give neurologists more options for the types of tests they can use to make an MS diagnosis. In our SPRINT project, we examined these changes in depth. We compared the new criteria for diagnosing MS in people without symptoms to the RIS guidelines. We explored the pros and cons of giving someone an MS diagnosis before symptoms appear and considered what this means for individuals, neurologists, and the healthcare system. We also reviewed the current and new tools used to tell MS apart from other conditions with similar features. Overall, our project complements the upcoming scientific report on the 2024 diagnostic criteria and aims to help more people understand what these changes mean in practice.

Limited care options for men living with MS:

a call to action.

SPRINTers: Tatiana MacKeigan, Bozena Szulc, Paul Yoo

SPRINT mentor: Dr. Julie Petrin
SPRINT Community Partner: Barb Van Walleghem

Book and Eyeglasses

Lay Summary: Multiple sclerosis (MS) does not affect everyone in the same way. Men and women experience different symptoms, disease progression, and treatment responses. Yet, most MS care option research does not consider these differences. Our team wanted to find out how current studies on MS care options consider the unique needs of men living with MS. We reviewed over 14,000 scientific articles. We found only 6 studies that looked at how care options affected the health of men, identified as sex or gender. Care options included sex hormone therapy, medication, and group therapy. Sex hormone therapy, specifically testosterone, slowed brain shrinkage in men with progressive MS. Androgen-modifying therapies showed increased disease activity in older men with relapsing remitting MS. Taffodil, an oral medicine, improved sexual function satisfaction. Disease-modifying therapies did not have a negative impact on fertility. Finally, completing a support group therapy increased self-satisfaction and promoted physical health. These findings should be reviewed with caution. There were a few studies done with a small number of participants. It is encouraging that, though there are few studies on care options for men with MS, positive results were seen. Our findings point to a significant gap in current knowledge. Without studying men-specific care options, we miss the chance to improve their health through more tailored care. Future MS research should place a focus on outcomes of care options specific to men. This can be done by changing how studies recruit, design, and analyze their data. This means researchers, funders, clinicians, and men living with MS must work together. By sharing our work, we hope to inspire more inclusive research that recognizes the differences between men and women living with MS.

Virus Studies

Epstein–Barr Virus and Multiple Sclerosis: Mechanisms, Therapeutic Implications, and Emerging Interventions

SPRINTers:
Kevin Champagne-Jorgensen, Reda Fazazi, Tamanna Islam

SPRINT Mentor: Dr. Marc Horwitz
SPRINT Community Partner: Karen Tweed

Lay Summary: Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a lifelong condition where the immune system mistakenly attacks the brain and spinal cord. While we don’t yet know exactly what causes MS, both inherited genes and environmental exposures seem to play a role. One very common virus — Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV), famous for causing mono in teenagers — has become a leading suspect. A large study of U.S. military personnel found that nearly everyone who developed MS had been infected with EBV first. This suggests EBV may be a key co-factor in starting the disease. To explore this further, we wrote a scientific review that explains how EBV might be linked to MS, and how future treatments could target the virus more effectively. We found that EBV could contribute to MS in several ways: •Some EBV proteins look similar to proteins in the brain, which may confuse the immune system into attacking healthy brain tissue. •The virus can “wake up” in the brain and make inflammation worse. •EBV may hijack certain immune cells and turn them harmful. While some current MS treatments may already affect EBV indirectly, we highlighted a few exciting new approaches being developed: •Engineered T cells: Special immune cells trained to find and destroy cells infected with EBV. •“Kick and Kill” therapies: Wake up hidden EBV so antiviral drugs can destroy it. •Vaccines: Preventing or controlling EBV infection to lower the chance of getting MS or make symptoms less severe. We also stressed the importance of collaboration between scientists, doctors, and people living with MS when testing new treatments targeting EBV. To truly understand how well these therapies work, we need better ways to measure their impact — including blood tests, brain scans, and especially feedback from patients about how they feel and function in daily life.

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