Timothy Vartanian

May 1, 2023 | jci.org | Anthony T. Reder |Yinghua Ma |Christopher E. Mason |Timothy Vartanian

AbstractMultiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory disease of the CNS. In this issue of the JCI, Ma and Sannino et al. show that two strains of intestinal Clostridium perfringens, known to produce epsilon toxin (ETX), were frequently found in patients with MS. Tiny amounts of this toxin added to immunization with myelin antigens provoked MS-like brain lesions in mice. The distribution of these lesions was diffuse, as in MS, in contrast to the spinal cord–restricted lesions of most animal models.