PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) — 2022 brought the announcement of a significant discovery in multiple sclerosis research.

For the first time ever, scientists announced a potential cause for the disease. It’s a big step in the research of chronic illness because the cause of multiple sclerosis is not known. Right now, when doctors diagnose patients, they learn their environment could play a role, such as where we live or low vitamin D levels.

“There’s been, for many years, an observation of an association between infectious mononucleosis and MS. When you look back at your medical record and look at a big population of people that have MS, and a big population of people that don’t have MS, more often the people in that population that have MS had infectious mononucleosis as a teenager than in the other group. It’s not an absolute of course. If you get mono, you don’t automatically get MS, but there’s an association between those two,” said Dr. Bruce Bebo, Executive Vice President of Research for the National MS Society.

In January, huge news was announced in the world of MS. The School of Public Health at Harvard announced results of a study that discovered Epstein-Barr virus, or EBV, the virus behind mono, could cause MS in certain people.

“The observation really came from studying large samples of blood stored by the military,” said Dr. Bebo.

He adds that the study looked at blood samples from 10 million service members. 35 of them did not have EBV when they had their first blood test, but went on to develop MS. A second blood test showed 34 out of 35 of those service members had been exposed to EBV after that first blood test, but before their MS diagnosis.

Now, Dr. Bebo says there is one more step to prove EBV causes MS.

“There are ongoing programs developing vaccines for EBV. The NIH, the National Institutes of Health, has had an ongoing program for many years, and they’ve made great progress towards developing a vaccine, and of course, the interesting timing, fortuitous timing, Moderna sharing that they have developed an EBV vaccine and are starting to test that is also very encouraging.”

These are all discoveries that take us one step closer to potentially ending MS.

“The National MS Society is the largest supporter of research, outside of the federal government, in the world. All of the discoveries, and all of the disease-modifying therapies we have for MS were catalyzed by investments society has made in MS research over the last 75 years. All of that is only made possible by the thousands, probably millions, of supporters that have donated to a walk or a bike, or that have participated in an event, that have volunteered at an event,” added Dr. Bebo. “None of this would happen without everyone contributing through these events. So, every person who has participated either as an event participant or as a volunteer, or who has supported a participant or a volunteer, is part of a movement that has gotten us to where we are today on the precipice of cures.”

These medical breakthroughs are why we want you to join us at events like Walk MS.

Join the WAVY Warriors at Walk MS Sunday, April 10, in Virginia Beach. If you can’t make the Southside event, head to the Peninsula the day before, Saturday, April 9. That event is in Newport News.

If you would like to donate to the WAVY Warriors to help us reach our goal of raising $20,000 for Walk MS, click here.