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Statins are best known for their cholesterol-lowering effects, but they also have immunomodulatory properties that might be exploited to treat neuroinflammatory disorders, such as multiple sclerosis. This review describes the molecular and cellular mechanisms that are thought to underlie the immunomodulatory effects, and discusses the results of initial clinical trials of statins in patients with multiple sclerosis.
The imaging of amyloid plaques in the living brain should not only aid the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, but also help us to understand its underlying pathophysiology. In this review, Dan Huddleston and Scott Small discuss the encouraging results that have been obtained in humans using positron emission tomography, and they assess the potential of MRI-based approaches for future investigations.
Autoantibodies against nerve glycosphingolipid antigens have been shown to have a central role in Guillain–Barré syndrome pathogenesis. Until recently, research has focused on antibody reactivity to highly purified single species of gangliosides, but new findings highlight the importance of analyzing antibody reactivity to ganglioside complexes.