February 5, 2009

vitamin D and Multiple Sclerosis: New research published in PLoS Genetics

Speakers:
Prof George Ebers, Department of Clinical Neurology, University of Oxford
Dr Julian Knight, Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford
Simon Gillespie, Chief Executive, Multiple Sclerosis Society

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a complex neurological disease that is thought to affect around 85,000 people in the UK. There is a strong genetic component to MS, but it is also thought that the environment plays a key role. In particular, vitamin D has been proposed as one environmental factor that might influence the risk of MS. The authors of new research in this area descibe their work examining the interaction between vitamin D and a particular gene associated with MS, which is published in the journal .