Journal Club Recap: May 17, 2019

April 12, 2019: At Journal Club, our experts sat down to discuss a paper on oligodendroglial-vascular interactions in MS.

Niu et al 2019 - Aberrant oligodendroglial-vascular interactions disrupt the blood-brain barrier, triggering CNS inflammation

Oligodendrocytes are the cells that produce myelin in the central nervous system and are derived from oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs). This research group noticed a trend in OPC clustering in MS patients that was different from the patterns seen in patients without MS. They found that MS patients had clustering of OPCs around blood vessels and proposed that this might indicate a dysfunction in the normal movement of these cells in MS patients. They further asserted that this dysfunction was associated with blood-brain barrier integrity and central nervous system inflammation. Further research is needed to understand the impact this has on remyelination in MS patients.