By Jim Spencer
School of Medicine
(Sept. 17, 2009) When he says “I struck out more times than Babe Ruth,” Don Gilden is not referring to the summer he spent playing minor league baseball for a New York Giants farm team. Gilden, a physician who chairs the neurology department at the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine, has been trying to determine the cause of multiple sclerosis since 1971.
So far he hasn’t.
Nearly four decades in pursuit of an elusive disease might wear down a lesser spirit. Gilden, 72, remains as convinced as ever that a virus, not an immune system problem, causes MS. Today, he works as hard to find this virus as he did in 1971.
“No one has found the cause of breast cancer either,” Gilden says. “It doesn’t mean you should stop trying.”
The Rocky Mountain MS Center honored Gilden’s tenacity on Sept. 12 with a lifetime achievement award.
“He has dedicated his career to researching the cause of MS and has been a thought leader in MS research and program development,” says Rocky Mountain MS Center Executive Director Karen Wenzel.
Gilden specializes in neurovirology, the study of how viruses affect the nervous system. He bases his viral MS theory on the fact that the brain and cerebrospinal fluid of multiple sclerosis patients contain increased amounts of an antibody known as IgG. The body uses antibodies to fight infections and viruses. But no one has discovered what the extra IgG in the bodies of multiple sclerosis victims tries to attack.
“We have cloned the antibody response,” says Gilden. “But it isn’t directed against the problem most people think.”
That just-published finding will “steer researchers away from an autoimmune explanation for the disease,” Gilden predicts.
If MS is viral, the best-case scenario is development of a vaccine to prevent multiple sclerosis, a condition that affects 300,000 to 400,000 Americans.
If, after nearly 40 years of trying, Gilden can finally identify the MS virus, he will have found his version of the Holy Grail.
If not, well, he figures to keep on looking.
Photo: Gildin, left, with SOM Dean Richard Krugman.