MS ‘Liberation’ treatment offers no help, may harm: study

TORONTO A small clinical trial of the so-called liberation treatment for multiple sclerosis has found that the intervention did not improve patients symptoms and in some cases even made their disease worse.

The University of Buffalo study of 30 MS patients concluded that the treatment which unblocks neck veins to improve blood drainage from the brain is safe. But researchers say the procedure showed no benefit on numerous measures of symptoms, disease progression and quality of life.

As well, MRI scans showed some patients had increased brain lesions, one of the hallmarks of the progressive neurological disease, after undergoing the vein-opening procedure.

What we found was rather surprising and unexpected, said neurosurgeon Dr. Adnan Siddiqui, co-principal investigator of the pilot study. It was quite the opposite of what we originally expected to find. The study showed that endovascular treatment of stenosed (blocked) veins had no effect in MS patients.

Despite the findings, both Saskatchewan and Health Canada said Friday they are going ahead with separate trials to determine whether the experimental treatment for MS has any validity.

The idea was first put forward by Italian vascular surgeon Paulo Zamboni, who hypothesized in 2009 that narrowed and twisted veins in the neck and chest create a backup of blood in the brain, resulting in iron deposits that could cause the lesions typical of MS.

Zamboni dubbed the abnormality chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency, or CCSVI. He suggested it might be a cause of MS and that opening up the veins with balloon angioplasty, the same procedure used to unblock coronary arteries, could help relieve symptoms and might even stop progression of the disease.

Since then, an estimated 30,000 MS patients worldwide have sought the therapy in clinics that have popped up in such countries as Poland, Bulgaria, India and Mexico, and to a lesser extent in the United States.

Included among those medical tourists are thousands of Canadians with MS: the unproven treatment is not offered in Canada.

An estimated 55,000 to 75,000 Canadians have MS, and the country has one of the highest rates of the incurable disease in the world. MS causes the destruction of myelin, the protective sheath around nerves throughout the body, leading to progressive physical and cognitive disability.

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MS ‘Liberation’ treatment offers no help, may harm: study