Potential New Treatment for Relapsing-Remitting MS
Good news for people with relapsing-remitting MS: a small clinical trial has shown that a drug used to fight cancer may reduce disease activity and disability in people with aggressive forms of the disease. According to our article about the potential new MS treatment, when the nine study patients took the cancer fighting immunosuppressant drug cyclophosphamide (Cytoxan or Neosar) intravenously for four consecutive days, they experienced long stretches of symptom-free remission. At the 23-month follow-up exam, study participants experienced on average a 39.4 percent reduction in disability, 87 percent improvement on physical and mental function tests and a decrease in the average number of brain lesions from 6.5 to 1.2. Read on to find out how long these periods of remission lasted and to learn more about how cyclophosphamide works.
My how time flies – today is the second gathering of the Ty-Ty Sisterhood on the shores of Lake Erie!
Hi Kim,
Just wanted to drop you a note and let you know that I’m enjoying your blog. I’m a fellow MS blogger on wordpress (http://mslol.wordpress.com/) known as A life of Learning on the Carnival of Bloggers. There is much I can relate to here.. the therapeutic aspects of writing and reinventing myself are phrases that I also use to describe my life with MS. I’ll keep checking back on yours and invite you to do the same on mine.
~All the best,
Amy (aglol)
I actually just recently posted something on my blog about the trial at John’s Hopkins. I emailed with Chris of (chrishadms.com) to learn more. If you are interested, check out his site.
Chris and his wife are now raising money to send other people for the “cure.” Be cautious, many of those from the first trial of the drug got better for a while but they were not “cured, ” and like the rat Algernon and his human counterpart, (Flowers for Algernon) they eventually regressed again.
Nadja