Taking a common antibiotic along with standard interferon treatment may be effective in helping some people with multiple sclerosis, a small preliminary study suggests.
The research, published online Monday and scheduled to appear in the February print issue of Archives of Neurology, involved 15 patients at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center.
The lead researcher, Dr. Alireza Minagar, said patients in the study were failing on interferon, and doctors wanted to find out if the anti-inflammatory properties of doxycycline, a member of the tetracycline family of antibiotics, might make a difference.
The inexpensive drug is often prescribed for people with acne; it is also used by dentists to treat people with gingivitis and inflammation, said Minagar.
"We decided to see if it's going to work with patients with multiple sclerosis because they have a strong component of inflammation during the disease process," he said in an interview from Shreveport, La. The researchers wanted to see whether adding the antibiotic would increase the effects of interferon, which boosts the immune system and fights viruses.
The MS Society of Canada says an estimated 55,000 to 75,000 Canadians have multiple sclerosis, a disease of the central nervous system that can affect vision, hearing, mobility, memory and balance.
The patients in Louisiana were studied for three months while they were getting only interferon. For the next four months, daily 100-milligram doses of doxycycline, taken orally, were added.
The study subjects were examined with MRIs to detect brain lesions and had blood work done routinely to monitor safety during the study.
"We found that a combination of doxy and interferon resulted in a reduction in what are called contrast-enhancing lesions and post-treatment expanded disability status skills," said co-author Dr. Steven Alexander of the department of cellular and molecular physiology.
Minagar said the majority of the patients who were failing on interferon responded favourably to the combination treatment. "In terms of MRI findings, we saw that eight of them actually showed much better response than the rest out of 15," he said.
"And they were those people who had more disease activity and initially had more lesions on their MRI scans, or contrast-enhancing lesions, which indirectly points towards more inflammatory activity."
Only one patient relapsed, he said.
However, the study is preliminary, Minager cautioned. Lengthier trials lasting at least two or three years and involving more MS patients are needed to obtain more robust results and to validate these initial findings.
Dr. Wee Yong, an MS researcher at the University of Calgary who's been involved in work using minocycline, another member of the tetracycline family, called the Louisiana findings interesting and encouraging. "They corroborate some recent data published by groups such as ours, again using a small number of patients, that there is promise in minocycline in MS," he said Monday.
But he said care is needed in interpreting the results because they are based on so few patients.
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