[Translational research in multiple sclerosis]

Translational research has become a challenge for the health care administration and Neurology Departments. The need to incorporate the results of basic research into the clinical setting and, vice versa, the orientation of basic research from the knowledge arising from clinical research, implies a new way of looking at the research concept. It also makes it necessary to reconsider the clinical health care and research infrastructures together with a need to define the functions health care neurologists and their involvement in the research tasks. Multiple sclerosis, due to its heterogeneous character, that is, clinical, pathogenic and pathological, is a paradigm of how translational research should help to improve knowledge of the clinical phenomena and to elaborate the therapeutic proposals based on said knowledge.