Life

HIV linked to lower MS risk

DRUGS used to treat HIV could potentially be used to treat multiple sclerosis (MS) in the future, experts have said after new research showed that people with the virus have a lower risk of MS.

Researchers found that people with a HIV infection have a significantly lower risk of developing the debilitating condition.

They said that chronic dampening down of the immune system as a result of HIV or the antiretroviral drugs used to treat it could be the reason behind the lowered risk.

Charity the MS Society said that while much more research is needed into the subject, the study shows that antiretrovirals could be a potential option for treatment for MS. Researchers from Queen Mary University of London, the University of Oxford and the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney, Australia, examined more than 21,000 HIV-positive patients treated in hospitals in England between 1999 and 2011 and compared them to more than five million control subjects.

Their study, published in the Journal Of Neurology Neurosurgery And Psychiatry, found that those with HIV were 62 per cent less likely to develop MS than the controls.

Dr Emma Gray of the MS Society, said: "This is a valuable and intriguing new study, and the first to show a significant link between HIV and a reduced risk of MS. "Much more research is needed to definitively prove whether having HIV or being treated for HIV with antiretrovirals, or even a combination of the two, reduces the risk of someone developing MS."