Treatment for MS

An article I found on a local TV station in theie Medical news and it was reported by : Leslie LoBue:Medical news from abc12.com
By Leslie LoBue
UNDATED (WJRT) — (02/12/08)– Doctors are getting close to stopping Multiple Sclerosis in its tracks.
HealthFirst reporter Leslie LoBue says doctors are testing a new drug that could stop the disease in its tracks.
For Cathy Gregory, independence doesn’t come easy. Reaching into the cabinet takes every ounce of energy she can muster.
Without her wheelchair, she’s immobile. Cathy’s fighting a debilitating form of Multiple Sclerosis known as secondary progressive M-S, or SPM-S.
Steven Cohen is a neurologist at Suncoast Medical Center in Florida. “It’s a slow, relentless process where they just get progressively worse.”
About 40 percent of M-S patients have SPM-S. Cathy has tried every drug available with no results. “I was on Rebif and I was on Novantrone, which is a chemotherapy drug. And I believe it was eight doses that I went through. It didn’t work for me.”
While there are effective drugs for traditional M-S, there are no current treatments for SPM-S. But a new injectable drug, MBP 8298, could help.
It’s similar to an allergy shot. Patients who have M-S lose the protective layer, myelin, which allows the central nervous system to send messages to the body. This twice-a-year injection introduces a protein that helps the immune system build tolerance to the disease.
“What we hope is that infusion of this small peptide, or small protein, will prevent or stop or at least, hopefully, slow this progressive, downhill course that these patients have,” Cohen said.
Cohen says this drug won’t offer patients a cure, but it could give them something almost as good. “People can live a semi-normal, almost normal life, and plan for the future and know what to expect.”
“To know that this drug could start to slow down the process, that gives me somewhat of an encouragement that, yes, I can take care of myself,” Gregory said, hopefully.
Trials of the drug are currently taking place across the U.S. and Canada. Dr. Cohen says it could be several years before the drug is widely available, but he says current tests have been very successful.
abclocal.go.com/wjrt/story?section=news/health&id=5952475 - 39k
These two article showa that MS research is going strong today.
I have had MS for over 25 yrs. and it is very interesting to see the new treatmets that are offered.

October 23, 2008 by Jessica Land
Leukemia drug can halt, reverse MS
For me, this could be life-changing news!
LONDON (AFP) – Researchers at the University of Cambridge said Thursday they have found that a drug originally developed to treat leukaemia can halt and even reverse the debilitating effects of multiple sclerosis (MS).
In trials, alemtuzumab reduced the number of attacks in sufferers and also helped them recover lost functions, apparently allowing damaged brain tissue to repair so that individuals were less disabled than at the start of the study.
“The ability of an MS drug to promote brain repair is unprecedented,” said Dr Alasdair Coles, a lecturer at Cambridge university’s department of clinical neurosciences, who coordinated many aspects of the study.
“We are witnessing a drug which, if given early enough, might effectively stop the advancement of the disease and also restore lost function by promoting repair of the damaged brain tissue.”
The MS Society, Britain’s largest support charity for those affected by the condition, said it was “delighted” at the trial’s results, which must be followed up with more research before the drug can be licensed.
“This is the first drug that has shown the potential to halt and even reverse the debilitating effects of MS and this news will rightly bring hope to people living with the condition day in, day out,” said head of research Lee Dunster.
MS is an auto-immune disease that affects millions of people worldwide, including almost 100,000 in Britain and 400,000 in the United States.
It is caused by the body’s immune system attacking nerve fibres in the central nervous system, and can lead to loss of sight and mobility, depression, fatigue and cognitive problems. There is no cure, and few effective treatments.
In the trial, 334 patients diagnosed with early-stage relapsing-remitting MS who had not previously been treated were given alemtuzumab or interferon beta-1a, one of the most effective licensed therapies for similar MS cases.
After three years, alemtuzumab was found to reduce the number of attacks the patients suffered by 74 percent over the other treatment, and reduce the risk of sustained accumulation of disability by 71 percent over interferon beta-1a.
Many individuals who took alemtuzumab also recovered some of their lost functions, becoming less disabled by the end, while the disabilities of the other patients worsened, the study in the New England Journal of Medicine said.
Alastair Compston, professor of neurology and head of the clinical neurosciences department at Cambridge, said alemtuzumab was the “most promising” experimental drug for the treatment of MS.
He expressed hope that further trials “will confirm that it can both stabilise and allow some recovery of what had previously been assumed to be irreversible disabilities”.
Alemtuzumab was developed in Cambridge and has been licensed for the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.

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James Eckburg
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