The biologist Javier Ochoa-Repáraz, researcher of the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute at the University of California Santa Barbara and former student of the University of Navarra, visited his homeland, Pamplona, where he gave a lecture lecture on the effect of some symbiont intestinal bacteria in the development of autoimmune diseases.

In particular, he focused on explaining his recent research on multiple sclerosis, a disease affecting the central nervous system, which he has studied using animal models. "Since the programs of study related to the human microbiome are difficult at the experimental level, animal models are used to study the interactions between the populations that make up the microbiota (community of living microorganisms that inhabit the intestine) and the immune system," he said.

Ochoa-Repáraz argued that, precisely, these symbiont microbes modulate the development and the function of the immune system and define a complex balance between our genes and immune responses, the environment where we live, the per diem expenses and other factors that predispose the presence of one or other symbiont microorganisms. "The absence of these in the intestine of these mice or the alteration of their populations with the use of antibiotics tends to modify the balance between cell populations associated with the disease and those that could induce protection. Our research has been based on finding symbiont intestinal bacteria or bacterial products capable of inducing protection in these animal models of multiple sclerosis," he concluded.  

Two out of every three people affected by the disease are women.
data Recent studies indicate that two million people worldwide suffer from multiple sclerosis; 45,000 in Spain and 500,000 in the USA. The proportion is higher in women than in men (two out of three sufferers are women) and the disorder is most frequently diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 40, although it can be seen at any age.

According to this expert,"the disease appears because cells of the immune system itself attack and destroy a covering (myelin) that protects the axons or extensions of the neurons and facilitates the transport of nerve impulses. When the myelin is damaged, nerve impulses are reduced and the patient suffers paralysis". 

Although the causes of its onset are currently unknown, there are several factors involved, including a combination of genetic and environmental triggers, such as climate, per diem expenses or the amount of sunlight received."In the USA, for example, it affects white people, mostly women, with Scandinavian origins in many cases."