I jumped at the chance to break this story. And then, I fell over! If you read this very interesting article from The Guardian newspaper you will realise that the MS Treatment is a step closer with a new drug is the new MS drug it might be.
As is often the case, a drug developed to treat another condition is shown to have some benefit for MS. A clinical trial of the cancer drug bexarotene showed that it repaired the protective myelin sheaths that MS destroys.
But, that is not all that bexarotene does for the poor MSer. It also has some horrendous side-effects.
- thyroid disease
- raised blood fat levels
New MS Drug
This research was funded by The MS Society. And while myelin sheath regrowth has been noted, bexarotene will not go forward for phase 3 trials. There is still hope that the diabetes drug metformin along with clemastine, an antihistamine, will be able to go into field trials.
This is a drug combination that Prof Robin Franklin at the Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute showed last year could drive remyelination in animals.
On a brighter note, I didn’t expect a significant breakthrough in my lifetime and. so far, I have not been disappointed.
Too often, and this case is no exception. I feel that the research focuses on the symptoms and not the underlying cause. If science could find a drug that stopped my body from attacking the myelin around my nerves. The body would repair the myelin on its own.
Because, I believe that what happen when MS remits is that the myelin is being repaired. And the symptoms subside, until the next period of disease xtivity. When the myelin is, once again, attacked and the symptoms return.
So, it is all very well finding a drug that promotes myelin regrowth. But, what we actually need is a drug that stops the immune from treating the myelin as a foreign invader.
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Stephen Walker
Stephen Walker is a blogger who has been living with Multiple Sclerosis or MS since 1994. He devotes a lot of time to researching this dreadful autoimmune disease, looking for answers and possible treatments.