Tipping the balance: anti-tumour necrosis factor alpha therapy may damage cerebral nerve reservation

Anti-tumour necrosis factor alpha therapy has transformed the treatment of certain inflammatory diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and ankylosing spondylitis, but onset of demyelinating events associated with multiple sclerosis as an adverse event was continuously reported, and such adverse events were only viewed as occasional. Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune demyelinating disorder affecting central nervous system, with varied clinical manifestations of cognitive, visual and motor network disorder. Recently, there is increasing evidence from functional magnetic resonance that cortical reorganization, a property that allows the central nervous system to adapt itself to various brain insults, which was viewed as to limit the clinical expression of tissue damage in patients with multiple sclerosis. In light of the mentioned above, we hypothesis that cerebral tissue damage may existed in a broader aspects of patients treated with anti-tumour necrosis factor therapy, but its clinical manifestations from brain lesions were compensated by cortical reorganization. In other words, cerebral nerve reservation may be damaged by the therapy. If confirmed, the hypothesis may lead to a safety concern of the therapy, and an insight of the pathophysiology of both multiple sclerosis and certain inflammatory diseases.