Nearly nine thousand MS researchers from America and Europe converged on Boston a couple weeks ago for an exciting meeting of shared clinical and basic science research on Multiple Sclerosis. Dr. Vernon Rowe, Dr. Elizabeth Rowe, Dr. John Hunter, and Certified MS Nurse Specialist Doug Schell from the Rowe Neurology Institute were among them.
It turns out that an electronic version of the EDSS for following multiple sclerosis patients is more accurate than the paper forms. Also, home cognition training and an iPAD app to improve performance in multiple sclerosis patients will also be available. And Facebook was shown to be able to play a major role in recruiting patients for multiple sclerosis clinical trials.
We’ve known smoking was bad for years, but it’s especially bad for MS patients. Smoking increases the risk of developing antibodies to natalizumab, extremely important for those patients on Tysabri. We’ve also known that vitamin D is important for multiple sclerosis patients, and it turns out that levels in the adolescent years are most important in the development of MS. And obesity is a major risk factor for the development of MS.
Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder is receiving increasing attention, since we once thought that NMO, or Devic’s disease, was simply a variant of multiple sclerosis. Now we know it is a very different disease from MS, since the discovery of anti-aquaporin 4 antibodies circulating in the blood, in that disease. This has major implications for African Americans, and for Japanese and Asian lineage, where a half or more of patients thought to have MS really have NMO or NMO Spectrum Disorder. These disorders require a different approach from MS, and some of the drugs we use to treat MS can make these patients worse. And about 12% of these patients actually have anti-MOG antibodies, with a different course from NMO.
And the clinical trials were exciting! Generic Glatiramer Acetate seemed to be shown to be as effective as its brand name drug, Copaxone. Daclizumab was shown to be effective against relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS). Pegylated interferon works and can be given every other week. Cellular therapies (stem cells) will be discussed in a separate article. Risk management for patients receiving natalizumab was discussed. Advanced MRI techniques were discussed in detail. Fused MRI and PET was studied, and the lesions in the coverings of the brain, and their damage to brain right across from them, was discussed. The importance of spinal cord involvement in multiple sclerosis and the need for spinal imaging was also presented.
And brain atrophy in patients with multiple sclerosis, and its correlation with spectral domain optical coherence tomography (OCT), as carried out at the RNI, was again emphasized as important in evaluation of neuro-protective effects for current and future multiple sclerosis therapies.
So it was a great meeting. But we still don’t have a cure, or a known cause for sure. That’s what I want to see!
By Vernon Rowe, M.D.