Category Archives: MS Treatment

Experimental MS Treatment Offers Hope To Patients Two-and-a-half million people are impacted by Multiple Sclerosis world wide and there is no known cure. Family Of Death Row Inmates Victim Wants Him To LiveThe family of a man who was murdered wants his killer to live. Irving's Chicken Ordinance PassesThey can keep their hens, but only one rooster can stay. Warning About Jury Duty Scam Hitting DFW AreaU.S. Marshals say it starts with a simple phone call that seems serious but ends up with some people losing cash. President Trump Orders Military Strike Against SyriaPresident Trump ordered military action against the Assad regime Thursday night after the Syrian chemical attack on Tuesday. Experimental MS Treatment Offers Hope To PatientsLitman, a top trial attorney in Dallas, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 18 years ago. A Dallas Startup Is Putting Robots To Work In The YardThe company, Robin, has installed 50 robot lawn mowers in the DFW area. Experimental MS Treatment Offers Hope To PatientsTwo-and-a-half million people are impacted by Multiple Sclerosis world wide and there is no known cure. Infant Mortality Rate On The Rise In Dallas CountyBabies are dying in Dallas County and now Parkland Hospital is pulling together a team … Continue reading →

April 5, 2017 6:21 PM By Gilma Avalos Follow CBSDFW.COM: Facebook|Twitter DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) Getting on the treadmill again, is a big step for Malia Litman. Im doing heel to toe walking, she says proudly as the belt moves underneath her feet. But to understand what a big victory this is, you need to know Litmans path. Litman, a top trial attorney in Dallas, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 18 years ago. As time passed, the disease slowly robbed her of her balance, mobility and energy. She says even taking a shower wiped her out. The disease is the most widespread disabling neurological condition in the world. You can imagine how contracted my world had become, it that was the level of energy I had, she explains. After she fell and broke her leg,Litman depended on a wheelchair for weeks. She says expensive MS medicines werent really working. Thats when she started looking for alternative treatments. Her search led her to Dr. Dimitrious Karussis. I believe many answers for our diseases and medical problems are hidden inside our body, Dr. Karussis explains. Hes leading experimental stem cell research at Hadassah Hospital in Israel, where he harvests a patients own adult stem … Continue reading →

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approveda first-of-its-kind treatment that can halt the progress of aggressive MS symptoms. Heres what you need to know about this important drug therapy. While various MS treatments already exist on the market, options for those with primary progressive MS, have been incredibly limited. Primary progressive MS differs from the relapsing and remitting variety in that symptoms like muscle weakness and loss of motor function gradually worsen, rather than emergingas sudden attacks. Available treatments canhelp manage specific symptoms of the disease, but none on the market have been able to target the progressive debilitation caused by this variety of MS until now. A newly approved drug, known asOcrevus, is given through an intravenous infusion by a health care professional every six months. In trials the drug showed a significant ability to interrupt the cycle of relapses for those with the more commonly understood relapsing and remitting MS. In addition, Ocrevus displayedwhat has been described as a modest ability to slow deterioration inpatients with primary progressive MS. While that might not sound particularlyencouraging, health experts claimthat it is a significant step forward. Multiple sclerosis can have a profound impact on a persons life, Dr. Billy … Continue reading →

In BriefThe FDA has approved the first and only treatment that fightsboth relapsing and primary progressive forms of multiple sclerosis.Now patients with the progressive form of MS have a treatmentoption that could prevent permanent disability. B Cell Targeted Therapy On March 28, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new drug called Ocrevus (ocrelizumab), the first and only treatment that fights both relapsing and primary progressive forms of multiple sclerosis (MS). Ocrelizumab represents a shift in focus for MS drug design, as it is a first-in-class therapy that specifically targets CD20-positive B cells thought to be linked to myelin and axonal nerve damage. Until now, treatments and research had been targeting T cells alone, which is not as effective. Approximately 400,000 people in the U.S. and more than 2 million worldwide suffer from MS, a chronic disease for which there is no cure. MS is characterized by abnormal attacks by the immune system on myelin sheaths of nerve cells in the brain, optic nerves, and spinal cord. The myelin sheath supports and insulates the nerve cells. When it is attacked, it becomes inflamed and eventually sustains damage. Symptoms of damage to the myelin sheath include fatigue, pain, muscle … Continue reading →

In autoimmune disorders, malfunctioning immune cells turn against the body. These cells attack the protective sheaths that surround neurons in the brain, which can eventually lead to a host of symptoms and conditions like paralysis, and in some cases be fatal. Now, imagine if these wayward cells could be influenced to control the disease, rather than fuel it. Research presented today at a meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) shows that its possible and could be a game-changer when it comes to treating autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis (MS) and type 1 diabetes. Read more: Get the facts on autoimmune diseases While current immunotherapies can yield positive results, they tend to deal in broad strokes. This approach can affect and potentially compromise the entire immune system, rather than dealing with just the cells that are causing problems. Christopher Jewell, PhD, associate professor in the bioengineering department at the University of Maryland, and lead researcher on the study released today, told Healthline that his team set out to develop a form of immunotherapy that specifically targeted the problematic cells, leaving the rest of the immune system alone. We are working on autoimmune disease, where the bodys immune system mistakenly recognizes … Continue reading →

A new treatment is available for multiple sclerosis patients. Amber Lee, KTVU , KXVA 12:20 PM. CDT April 03, 2017 We spoke with a woman whos been living with MS for 15 years. She says this is a life-changing disease ad that much more research needs to be done. MS is a horrible disease, Carol Schumacher said. Schumacher was diagnosed with progressive MS in 2002. She says the newly approved drug, Ocrelizumab by Genetech, is significant because no one knows the cause of MS nor is there a cure. Any bit of hope for improvement is significant in our lives. The disease can lead to paralysis and cognitive disease. It certainly changed my life dramatically. I had to look at my life ending in a wheelchair and severely debilitated. She says she wasnt able to walk more than two blocks without assistance and designed her home to accommodate an elevator. Its the most common crippler of young to middle age adults, with the exception of brain injuries, Doctor Stephen Hauser said. Dr. Hauser, the chairman of UCSFs neurology department, oversaw the clinical trials for the drug. He says there are other drugs that treat MS, but Ocrelizumab is the most … Continue reading →

In Brief Multiple Sclerosis is a chronic, inflammatory, autoimmune disease of the central nervous system that can cause a wide range of physical and neurological symptoms. A new FDA approved drug treatment hopes to change that. What Is Multiple Sclerosis? Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmunedisease that occurs when the bodys immune system attacks the protective myelin covering nerve cells. As the cells are stripped of their insulation, it causes inflammation which disrupts communication among cells in the nervous system. This can lead tomuscle weakness, poor coordination, bladder and bowel problems, vision impairment, and cognitive difficulties. MS is thought to affect as many as2.3 million people worldwide, including over 300,000 Americans. The average American has a 0.1% chance of developing MS. The condition can take years to progress enough forsymptoms to bepresent, and is generally diagnosed between the ages of 20 50. But the disease can be very difficult to diagnose definitively: many patients may live with a probable diagnosis for years, if notdecades, before the disease is diagnosed definitively. The majority of known MS-cases are relapsing-remitting MS, where symptoms are intermittent and followed by periods of complete or partial recovery. 10% of known MS cases can develop into a … Continue reading →

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. (WEAU)-- Sally Pathos has lived with primary progressive Multiple Sclerosis for the past 30 years. My symptoms don't go away anymore. They just continue to slowly worsen. When I was first diagnosed, there really weren't any drugs out there. It was kind of a scary disease. A progressive neurological disease without a cure and it still doesn't have a cure but now there are so many drugs that slow the progression down, says Pathos. But a new drug just approved by the FDA may change the way people with MS live. Ocrevus, approved Wednesday is the first treatment for primary progressive MS, which is the most aggressive type of the disease. I immediately called Dr. More's office and said, "Ok this is approved, I want to start tomorrow," tongue and cheek knowing that there's a lot of steps. Steps pathos is excited to take, in hopes of reversing the stages of MS, a treatment that has never been available before. We've had no treatments that have been proven to help and this is the first treatment that has the ability to delay progression so it's a very exciting thing, says Marshfield Clinic Neurologist Roland More who explains, … Continue reading →

March 29, 2017 by Nina Bai An MRI scan of a person with multiple sclerosis shows bright spots, which are MS plaques. Credit: NIH A newly approved drug that is the first to reflect the current scientific understanding of multiple sclerosis (MS) is holding new hope for the hundreds of thousands Americans living with the disease. It also highlights the importance of clinician-scientists like UC San Francisco's Stephen Hauser, MD, who are working to transform research into cures for patients. The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday approved ocrelizumab (brand name Ocrevus) to treat both relapsing-remitting MS and primary progressive MS, the first time a therapy has been available for severe forms of the disease. The drug, the first that targets B cells in the human body, grew out of the work of Hauser, chair of neurology at UCSF, whose team persevered for decades in elucidating the science behind MS, defending findings that contradicted long-standing assumptions and translating the science into a therapy. A Devastating Disease In MS, the immune system attacks the protective myelin covering around nerve cells, stripping them like insulation from electrical wires. We now know, thanks in large part to Hauser and his colleagues, that immune … Continue reading →

"We've been banging on a wall with a bunch of drugs, and we finally put a big crack in the wall," said Dr. Jerry Wolinsky, professor emeritus at the University of Texas in Houston. Wolinsky was a lead author on a study in January showing that the drug, ocrelizumab, slowed the decline in patients with primary progressive multiple sclerosis. Multiple sclerosis is a neurological disease that affects hundreds of thousands of people, mostly women, in the United States. The disease scars nerve tissue and causes a range of symptoms, from vision problems to paralysis. While the most common form of the disease gets better and worse over time, about 10% to 15% of patients have a form known as primary progressive, which gets slowly worse over time. There had been no approved drugs for this variation until now. "The drug is so much more effective at shutting down inflammation," said Dr. David Hafler, a multiple sclerosis researcher and the chair of neurology at Yale School of Medicine. Hafler has studied the drug but was not involved in the trials leading up to the FDA approval. He does not receive consulting fees from the drug's manufacturer, Genentech, but his lab has … Continue reading →