Multiple Sclerosis Therapies Show Promise

Last November, news broke an Italian doctor may have made a radical and as yet controversial discovery on the nature of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) that could alter the debilitating ailment’s treatment. This week came news that another therapy for relapsing multiple sclerosis added to standard treatment shows serious promise (March 2010,  Lancet Neurology), and a report that the Italian doctor’s views will be clinically tested in Canada. Excerpt are below:

Promising Therapy for Relapsing Multiple Sclerosis
ScienceDaily (Feb. 16, 2010)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 16, 2010) — An international team of researchers has found that adding a humanized monoclonal antibody called daclizumab to standard treatment reduces the number of new or enlarged brain lesions in patients with relapsing multiple sclerosis. This new study was published online Feb. 16, 2010, and in the March edition of the Lancet Neurology.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a debilitating disease in which the body’s immune system attacks the fatty substance that surrounds and protects the nerve fibers in the brain and spinal cord. The resulting damage interferes with the transmission of nerve signals between the brain and spinal cord and other parts of the body, producing a variety of symptoms including problems with balance, coordination, vision, and even mental function. Approximately 85 percent of multiple sclerosis patients are initially diagnosed with relapsing MS, in which clearly-defined attacks of worsening neurologic function are followed by partial or complete recovery periods during which no disease progression occurs.

MS remains mysterious and as conventiuonal medical science works for a definicative diagnosis and cure, long-time sufferers are lobbying hard for treatment advocated by the Italian, Dr. Paolo Zamboni. Now, it is reported that a “team of doctors from McMaster University [Canada], St. Joseph’s Healthcare and Hamilton Health Sciences will test [Zamboni’s] theory that multiple sclerosis is a vascular disease that can be treated with a simple surgical procedure, angioplasty, to clear blockages in veins.”

Italian doctor may have found surprisingly simple cure for Multiple Sclerosis
By Loz Blain
November 26, 2009

An Italian doctor has been getting dramatic results with a new type of treatment for Multiple Sclerosis, or MS, which affects up to 2.5 million people worldwide. In an initial study, Dr. Paolo Zamboni took 65 patients with relapsing-remitting MS, performed a simple operation to unblock restricted bloodflow out of the brain – and two years after the surgery, 73% of the patients had no symptoms. Dr. Zamboni’s thinking could turn the current understanding of MS on its head, and offer many sufferers a complete cure.

Multiple sclerosis, or MS, has long been regarded as a life sentence of debilitating nerve degeneration. More common in females, the disease affects an estimated 2.5 million people around the world, causing physical and mental disabilities that can gradually destroy a patient’s quality of life.

It’s generally accepted that there’s no cure for MS, only treatments that mitigate the symptoms – but a new way of looking at the disease has opened the door to a simple treatment that is causing radical improvements in a small sample of sufferers.

Italian Dr. Paolo Zamboni has put forward the idea that many types of MS are actually caused by a blockage of the pathways that remove excess iron from the brain – and by simply clearing out a couple of major veins to reopen the blood flow, the root cause of the disease can be eliminated.

Dr. Zamboni’s revelations came as part of a very personal mission – to cure his wife as she began a downward spiral after diagnosis. Reading everything he could on the subject, Dr. Zamboni found a number of century-old sources citing excess iron as a possible cause of MS. It happened to dovetail with some research he had been doing previously on how a buildup of iron can damage blood vessels in the legs – could it be that a buildup of iron was somehow damaging blood vessels in the brain?

He immediately took to the ultrasound machine to see if the idea had any merit – and made a staggering discovery. More than 90% of people with MS have some sort of malformation or blockage in the veins that drain blood from the brain. Including, as it turned out, his wife.

He formed a hypothesis on how this could lead to MS: iron builds up in the brain, blocking and damaging these crucial blood vessels. As the vessels rupture, they allow both the iron itself, and immune cells from the bloodstream, to cross the blood-brain barrier into the cerebro-spinal fluid. Once the immune cells have direct access to the immune system, they begin to attack the myelin sheathing of the cerebral nerves – Multiple Sclerosis develops.

He named the problem Chronic Cerebro-Spinal Venous Insufficiency, or CCSVI.

Following is an excerpt from the report on doctors from McMaster University [Canada], testing the Chronic Cerebro-Spinal Venous Insufficiency (CCSVI) view.

Hamilton researchers to test Italian scientist’s MS theory
Idea that MS is a treatable vascular disease has been controversial

Researchers in Hamilton plan to begin patient trials evaluating the work of an Italian scientist whose intriguing treatment for multiple sclerosis has sparked both hope and controversy.

The team of doctors from McMaster University, St. Joseph’s Healthcare and Hamilton Health Sciences will test the theory that multiple sclerosis is a vascular disease that can be treated with a simple surgical procedure, angioplasty, to clear blockages in veins. Using magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasound technology, researchers will study veins in the brains of 200 long-suffering patients and healthy people to see if there is a difference between them.

Those results could add to Paolo Zamboni’s early findings that multiple sclerosis may be caused by vein blockages that lead to a buildup of iron in the brain – a radical departure from current thinking that MS is an autoimmune condition in which the immune system attacks myelin, a fatty substance that coats nerve cells.

Many in the medical community have been skeptical of Dr. Zamboni’s work, because it is preliminary, with a small sample size, and has been heavily promoted before it has gone through the rigorous scientific research process.

On Monday [Feb 8], Dr. Zamboni, in Hamilton for a scientific workshop, came out swinging at his critics. He said he has never proposed that blockages are the only cause of multiple sclerosis, and he welcomed more rigorous testing of his work..