User:Droflet/Sandbox/MSA

Research Progress in MSA

Tracking progress in understanding Multiple System Atrophy and finding effective treatments

This set of pages comprises a complementary project to the The Science Behind Parkinson's learning project and uses material in the latter to support it.

Like the Parkinson's Science learning project, the MSA project provides a universally accessible place on the web where those interested in learning about this devastating disease and, in particular, the scientific information that has been discovered about it can describe what they have learned so that a body of up to date information in language that is accessible to the non-specialist can be built up and maintained.

A lot of progress has been made recently in understanding the mechanism of the pathogenesis of neurological diseases including Parkinson's and MSA. These pages are meant to enable us to keep up with this and to provide the background information we need to understand it. A lot of that background information is already in the Parkinson's Science pages and need not be repeated here.

It is suggested that there be two sections for MSA pages:
 * One for a systematic treatment of the subject which gets built upon and amended are research provides more results;
 * and another which is more akin to the Parkinson's Science Magazine Section which enables articles on the latest significant discoveries in the MSA field to be elaborated and commented on.

As with the Parkinson's Science learning project, the MSA project is open to everyone interested in contributing. Scientists working in the field are particularly invited to contribute both with fresh articles and with amendments to articles and pages written by non-specialists. It is important that what is written in these pages is accurate, in sufficient depth to be useful and non-simplistic and fully referenced.

Suggestions for Content and Structure

 * Start with an introductory article in the Magazine Section on "The current state of knowledge about MSA pathology". This can reference pages in the Parkinson's Science project which describe relevant background such as protein misfolding/alpha-synuclein and its spread through the nervous system.
 * There should also be a page in the Main Section about the basics of MSA. It should be possible to make this a short page which has the main purpose of linking to other sites on the Internet, especially Wikipedia, which already describe MSA well.  It would really be a signposting page.  (The recent book by Gregor Wenning et al is an excellent source document and should be referenced but, of course, its full text is not freely available on the Internet.)
 * As these two pages are composed, ideas should emerge for other topics and to be tackled as an early priority. Implications for an evolving structure should also emerge.

Next Steps
The articles proposed above should be written and an entry page should be produced. Some of the contents of these notes should be in that entry page and the rest moved to the Discussion/talk page.

It is suggested that entry page is not composed as a Portal page in the Portal workspace. Perhaps later a page in the Portal workspace can be set up but this would merely be in order to direct the reader to the top MSA page in the Main workspace.