ArticleNeurological research and practice2021
Treatment of progressive multiple sclerosis with high-dose all-trans retinoic acid - no clear evidence of positive disease modifying effects.
Article in Neurological research and practice, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 10 citations in OpenAlex.
- Retinoic acid in health and disease.Signal transduction and targeted therapy · 2026Review
- Oxylipin Biomarkers of Auto-Oxidation Are Associated with Antioxidant Micronutrients and Multiple Sclerosis Disability.Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Can supplementation with antioxidants improve cognitive functions in patients with multiple sclerosis? A literature review.Annals of medicine and surgery (2012) · 2025Review
- Potential therapeutic effects of ibudilast and retinoic acid against cuprizone-induced behavioral and biochemical changes in mouse brain.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2025Article
- Multiple Sclerosis Pathogenesis and Updates in Targeted Therapeutic Approaches.Current allergy and asthma reports · 2023Review
- Reduction in Fatigue Symptoms Following the Administration of Nutritional Supplements in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis.Medical sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundAll-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) is an acid derivative of vitamin A which is discussed as a promising candidate to ameliorate the disease course of multiple sclerosis (MS) by immunomodulation or even by promoting regeneration in progressive MS. Here we report a patient who significantly improved for MS related disability following administration of chemotherapy including ATRA for mitoxantrone-related acute promyelocytic leukemia and assess the effect of high-dose ATRA in three additional patients with progressive MS.
methodsPatients with progressive MS who had failed previous therapies were treated with high-dose ATRA. Patients underwent clinical and routine laboratory monitoring. Additionally, PBMCs were analyzed by flow cytometry for lymphocyte subsets.
resultsATRA was well tolerated and no pathological laboratory abnormalities were observed. After initial mild (not statistically significant) improvement of EDSS and mean MSFC z-score, ongoing disease progression was observed. One patient subacutely experienced severe cognitive and motor worsening. Cerebral MRI revealed persistent gadolinium-enhancing lesions. Flow cytometric alterations of peripheral blood naïve, central memory and effector memory CD4 and CD8 T cells, B lymphocytes, plasma cells, memory B cells, plasmablasts and natural killer (NK) cells did not reach statistical significance.
conclusionsStand-alone therapy with ATRA did not ameliorate progressive MS in our limited cohort and we did not observe consistent alterations of T and B cell subsets. Intriguingly, application of ATRA may have caused marked disease exacerbation in one patient.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.