Multiple Sclerosis Newsletter
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Research UpdatesWe interrupt this Research Update for a local notice: Dave Boll from Greeley sent us this information. He said: “I created a Northern Colorado MS group on Yahoo! groups. This group is designed for those in the northern Front Range of Colorado, including Longmont, Loveland, Greeley, Fort Collins, and surrounding communities. The purpose of the group is to serve as a support forum, a ‘bulletin board’ for local news, and anything else members wish to discuss. The group is athttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/NColMS/ Now back to our Research Updates. PREGNANCY HORMONE MAY OFFER HOPE FOR MS PATIENTS By Will Dunham(Source: Reuters, 02/21/07) Scientists, intrigued by the fact that multiple sclerosis can go into remission when women are pregnant, believe that a pregnancy-related hormone may offer hope for treating the neurological disease. Researchers at the University of Calgary said a study involving mice showed that a hormone called prolactin triggers production of myelin, a fatty substance that insulates nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. In multiple sclerosis, the immune system, which normally protects the body, is believed to attack the myelin that coats nerve cells, causing a worsening loss of sensation and movement that can range from relatively minor to profoundly disabling. The damage can hamper nerve signals that govern muscle coordination, strength, sensation and vision. There is no cure. The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, indicated that prolactin could be used in people to repair damage caused by MS and improve their symptoms. Pregnant mice had many more myelin-producing cells, known as oligodendrocytes, than virgin female mice of the same age, the study found. The researchers destroyed myelin around the nerve cells in the mice, as occurs in MS. Two weeks later, the pregnant mice had twice as much new myelin as the other mice. When the scientists injected prolactin into the non-pregnant mice, their myelin similarly was repaired. “The implications are that prolactin may be a molecule that can be tested in MS patients for stimulating repair,” Samuel Weiss, director of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute at the University of Calgary and senior author of the study, said in an interview. Prolactin increases in the body during pregnancy and is involved in stimulating milk production among other things. Weiss said he anticipated that one to two years of additional animal studies will be needed before testing prolactin in people with MS. ‘A WHOLE NEW AVENUE’: William McIlroy, medical advisor for the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, which helped fund the study, said scientist have known for years that during pregnancy women with MS experienced an improvement in symptoms, and that this extended into the first couple of months after giving birth. “Then they sort of go back into the previous level of disease activity again,” McIlroy said in an interview. He said the study links that phenomenon to prolactin and offers hope for treating MS. It’s repair rather than dampening down the immune system to prevent the damage in the first place. It just opens up a whole new avenue for future treatments down the road,” McIlroy said. He added that the findings also could have implications for other neurological conditions like spinal cord injury. MS disrupts communication between the brain and other parts of the body. Most people who develop MS experience their first symptoms between ages 20 and 50. MS affects about twice as many woman as men. Its cause is unclear, with environmental and genetic factors possibly contributing. Initial symptoms can be vision problems. Many patients have muscle weakness in their extremities and difficulty with coordination and balance that may impede walking or standing. MS can cause partial or total paralysis. MS patients can experience pain, numbness and tingling sensations along with slurred speech, tremors, dizziness and fatigue. DISABILITY PROGRESSION IN MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS IS SLOWER THAN PREVIOUSLY REPORTED Tremlett H., Paty D., Devonshire V. Department of Medicine (Neurology), University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Neurology 2006 Jan 24;66(2):172-7 OBJECTIVE: To investigate disease progression and risk factors in a large geographically based population with multiple sclerosis (MS), using two different inception points—clinical onset and date of birth. METHODS: The authors reviewed a database of subjects with definite MS and symptom onset prior to July 1988. The main outcome was sustained progression to Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) 6 (requires a cane), using the date of birth and date of MS onset as inception points in separate analyses. Risk factors examined were sex, relapsing vs primary progressive course, onset age, and onset symptoms. RESULTS: The study included 2,837 patients, followed prospectively for 22,723 patient years. The median time to EDSS 6 was 27.9 years, 15 years after onset; only 21% reached EDSS 6, and by age 50, 28% required a cane. Men progressed 38% more quickly than women from onset (p < 0.0005), yet both required canes at similar ages: 58.8 years for men and 60.1 for women (p = 0.082). A younger onset age predicted a slower progression but those older at onset were consistently older when reaching EDSS 6. A primary progressive course predicted a more rapid progression from both onset (p < 0.0005) and birth (hazard ratio = 2.7 [95% CI: 2.2 to 3.3]). No onset symptom consistently predicted progression. CONCLUSION: Disability progression in multiple sclerosis (MS) accrued more slowly than found in earlier longitudinal studies. The authors also challenged two fundamental concepts in MS, demonstrating that neither male sex nor older onset age was associated with worse disease outcome. LONGITUDINAL FOLLOW-UP OF “BENIGN” MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS AT 20 YEARS Sayao AL, Devonshire V, Tremlett H. Dept. of Medicine (Neurology), Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada Neurology 2006 Feb 13;68(7):496-500 OBJECTIVE: To evaluate disease status after 20 years in a cohort defined as “benign multiple sclerosis (MS)” (Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) score < or =3) at 10 years from onset. METHODS: Patients with an EDSS score < or = 3 at 10 (+/- 1) years from onset were selected from the British Columbia MS clinic database. The 20 year EDSS score was the primary outcome. Potential risk factors differentiating those who “continued benign” (EDSS score < or = 3.0) from those who were “no longer benign” (EDSS score > 3.0) at 20 years, including age at onset, onset symptoms, and 10-year EDSS score, were analyzed, and lower 10-year EDSS score cutoffs were investigated. RESULTS: Twenty-year EDSS scores were obtained for 169 of 200 patients (84.5%); of these, 88 (52.1%) continued benign, but 36 (21.3%)) progressed to require the use of a cane (EDSS score > or = 6). Conversion to secondary progressive MS occurred in 45 of 196 patients (23%) with a relapsing-remitting onset. The only variable associated with disease progression at 20 years was the 10-year EDSS score (p < 0.0005); no 10-year EDSS score seemed ideal in predicting benign status, and an EDSS score < or = 2 resulted in 32% becoming no longer benign. DISCUSSION: At 10 years from onset, neither an Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDS) score < or = 3 nor an EDSS score < or = 2 adequately represented “benign multiple sclerosis (MS)” because an appreciable proportion of patients progressed in disease severity. Appropriate and reliable criteria to identify which patients with MS remain with mild disability over the long term have yet to be determined. STRESS AND MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS Cleveland Clinic 11/01/01 Stress refers to two different things: situations that trigger a reaction (physical and/or emotional) and the response to those triggers. Each individual’s experience of stress depends on the nature of the stressor and how the stressor is perceived.
How can I learn to relax? There are a number of exercises that you can do to relax. These exercises include breathing, muscle and mind relaxation, relaxation to music, and biofeedback. A few that you can try are listed below. First, be sure that you have: From Donita: This is from Readers Digest of March, 2007. They have a “Health IQ” article, and I have no idea where they got their information, but will pass it on. “Caucasians with the highest levels of vitamin D in their blood are 62% less likely to develop MS than those with the lowest amounts.” I have read some articles lately that hint that vitamin D (or lack of it) may be related to MS. The theory as I read it is that people in the south get more sunshine than the folks in the north, and therefore more vitamin D from the sun. Nothing proven, no real studies that I can find, however, taking reasonable amounts of vitamin D is not a bad idea – you need it to assimilate the calcium anyhow. Over doses of this very valuable vitamin is a very bad thing, so you have to be reasonable. As I get it, about 800 IU’s a day is max for it. I am not suggesting in any way that you change your vitamin intake, but this is worth thinking about until we can find definite studies to back this up. I think this would be one of the hardest things to study as the control group probably would not want to be devoid of any necessary vitamin. However, keeping our kids on adequate calcium and vitamin D is not a bad idea. Drinking milk fortified with vitamin D surely cannot hurt. Nor should a multiple vitamin containing D along with other necessary things be a bad idea. I would check with my Dr., however, and see what his/her opinion is on this. It would be wonderful if something as simple as this could prevent MS in our children and for that matter help folks who already have MS. I will do more research on this. |
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