Demyelinating diseases are disorders of the central or peripheral nervous system caused by autoimmune reactions, infectious agents, genetic mutation, toxic agents or metabolic changes.
The Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS, the National Institute of Health in Italy) studies causes and mechanisms of multiple sclerosis, the most common inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system. A line of research concerns the role played by a very common virus, the Epstein-Barr virus, on the antiviral inflammatory response implicated in myelin damage, to provide useful knowledge for the development of increasingly safe drugs.
The ISS also carries out research on indicators in brain injury to monitor clinical course and response to therapy.
