A clinical study of 30 adult patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine has shown that smoked cannabis may be an effective treatment for spasticity -- a common and disabling symptom of this neurological disease.

Researchers at the University of Houston (UH) are recommending a new strategy for developing drugs to treat cancer, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's and cardiovascular diseases.

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2011) In a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, a pair of researchers at the University of California, San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences report that inhibiting the ability of immune cells to use fatty acids as fuel measurably slows disease progression in a mouse model of multiple sclerosis (MS).

Dr. John Rioux, researcher at the Montreal Heart Institute, Associate Professor of Medicine at the Universit¨¦ de Montr¨¦al and original co-founder of the International Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Consortium is one of the scientists who have identified 29 new genetic variants linked to multiple sclerosis, providing key insights into the biology of a very debilitating neurological disease. Many of the genes implicated in the study are relevant to the immune system, shedding light onto the immunological pathways that underlie the development of multiple sclerosis.