Queen Square

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To stop Caroline Wyatt visited Professor Robin Franklin, to find out more about a drug that could help the progression of MS -

"I don't like to think of The Future to proceed. It's like a big question mark. I always live only in The Present . "

Karine Mather was diagnosed with MS when she was 27, although she noticed The First symptoms much earlier.

It began as a mental health Problem with anxiety and depression, she recalls. Later, she noticed a limp, she began, as they walked longer distances.

Karine began to help with a walker, with your balance and your endurance, And Then to a scooter, if you could not go far.

"I've got to the stage where the wheelchair was very liberating and gave me back a sense of freedom. Now I rely on the power-chair full-time because I Can 't take it anymore, of me. "

Now, Karine, and your wife, Sarah, have to give their full-time jobs.

Karine was forced to stop working as a customer consultant in a bank, because she was able to Karine not the physical requirements of the work and Sarah gave up work as a data analyst, so she could watch.

Now 34, Karine, the use of only one hand reserves, and suffers from pain, stiffness, and spasticity in your body that is worse advanced than the disease.

"It feels like a fist All the time clenched up. And I have days when my mind is cloudy and I miss you, words and sentences. "

the Two remain optimistic, but the financial as well as emotional impact of MS, were huge.

Karine ' s MS is the type known as "primary progressive", or PPM, which meant that for The First few years after diagnosis, no disease-modifying treatment available.

A new drug - Ocrevus, or ocrelizumab was recently a license for the early PPMS in the UK, but came to Karine.

to increase the MS society's response to the initiation of an ambitious "Stop-woman", with the aim of £100m for the financing of Research in the next ten years in treatments the progression stop progression of disability in MS.

Since the diagnosis of MS in the year 2015, after many years of symptoms that I have been looking for anything that might help Slow down or even stop the progression of my MS, The Nerves in my Brain and Spinal Cord .

after the last trip to Mexico for an autologous stem cell transplant (aHSCT) in 2017.

Unfortunately, despite initial improvements, I'm now back where I was before: slowly, but surely, getting worse and worse.

The only improvements that have to endure, the abolition of some of the crushing Brain fog I had before HSCT and less hesitation in my speech.

For both I Am eternally grateful, because it means that I Can continue to work at the BBC, in The Job that I love.

However, I have no idea how long this respite Will last.

The fatigue that is already a long time my worst symptom now with a vengeance, so that the stay awake during a stressful day of work, remains a challenge.

The MS fatigue did lift for a couple of months, and it felt wonderful. I woke up refreshed Every Day . But then he and I returned to awake, after eight full hours, a feeling of sleep quickly, As If I not to bed at All .

Brain scan of a patient with MS, The ageing Process , including menopause - almost certainly a factor in the worsening of some symptoms.

Aging cell repair is less good, and with my error, the immune system is liable, apparently, decided to continue the Stripping away of the myelin sheath, which is supposed to protect my nerves, I Am now less able to repair the damage, as I was when the disease began to be on me in about 1992.

Since 2016, I have to walk with a cane to help my balance. It's sparkly top is; an effort the clothes of disability just a little more cheerful.

dizziness is now a constant companion. Rarely so that traveling with your car, or even buses A Nightmare to be removed. Just turned my head too fast, I Can stagger or fall over.

And for The Past year or two, my right foot has started to drag along the ground due to the foot drop, this is not to say, I travel often because I lift completely.

I Am always grateful to The Strangers who stop in a friendly way, to help me, from the uneven pavement, when I fall.

is Perhaps the most worrying for me is that my right hand works like it used to catch on the Computer Keyboard , as my outer fingers dragging lazily along The Keys , surly my Brain refuses to lift the command.

In the morning, both of my hands and my feet are numb and frozen, painful, full of pins and needles in front of the warm-up enough to be usable, a few hours later.

When I Wake up, I Wonder how long it could take to get this hands and feet work hardly at All , and quickly push that unpleasant thought away.

I Am aware of how very happy I Am that the progression of my MS has been relatively Slow , at least until recently. I've learned How To better save energy for the things that are really important, although I still always rubs How To achieve the little I Can .

With enough energy to cook a meal From Scratch a Day Off is a cause for jubilation. I'm still learning How To save up enough energy for family and friends, and not All my exhausted-ration for the work or Research .

I had to face the fact that I Am now well away from the relapsing-remitting phase of MS (for a dozen or so treatments exist) in the secondary progressive phase, for which there is currently no treatment, which is licensed in the UK to stop the relentless progression, which is so influenced Will be that many of the 100,000 or more of us living with MS here.

But that could change now.

Anna Williams , a professor of regenerative neurology at the University of Edinburgh, Will examine how The Brain reacts to MS damage and how the fatty myelin Can be restored to make it more efficient being attacked for a divorce in MS.

Prof Anna Williams is working on Brain -stem-cell Research "We have to find ways to stop The Nerves die," she says. "We want to be able to try to limit, either to keep The Nerves alive, or keep the work better. "

to help the re-use of existing drugs, with remyelination should prove that the fastest way to therapies for progressive forms of MS, because the creation and licensing is new for a lot longer and more expensive Process .

Prof Williams sees patients at the Anne Rowling Regenerative neurology clinic in Edinburgh, is named in memory of the Harry Potter author J K Rowling ' s mother, the WIFE (The author donated this year to £15m for Research on The Unit . )

"at The moment, with PPMS or SPMS, we Can always provide relief for pain or stiffness, but we don't change the course of the disease. to Slow down

"So for those patients, or to stop or reverse the disease, only with more Research , and the money is crucial for the Research . "

The largest study, which is still in the UK for patients with secondary progressive MS, under the direction of Prof Jeremy chat away for the UCL Queen Square Institute of neurology in London.

The study is always to look at the recruitment of 30 centres throughout the UK, whether simvastatin, a drug used to treat high cholesterol, may Slow or stop progression of disability. If so, it has the potential to be one of The First disease-modifying therapies for people with secondary progressive MS.

Caroline and Karine has hope, you Can both benefit from the developments, And perhaps encourage All of you, Prof Robin Franklin and his team from the Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, recently published Research suggesting that a common diabetes drug metformin could hold to stop The Key , the progression of the disease in MS.

only Costs a few pence per tablet, metformin seems an ability, restoring cells to a younger, healthier state and encourage myelin regrowth.

The next question is whether it works in people as well as it does in the laboratory.

Prof Franklin says: "This is a drug, well tolerated, and available everywhere. There is every reason To Believe that the effects that we have Seen - were so Spectacular , translate them to the people.

"this is the great limit of the MS therapy. We are good at stopping the inflammation in a WOMAN, What we have is not so good, the repair of the damage. All this work has given us some real hope that this drug Will feel in the opposite the damage, the WOMAN "

I'm more hopeful than I did.

But I'm only too aware that Time Is against me, as my old fighting Brain and body to repair the damage in your long lasting struggle with My Own immune system.

it is according to lapidary.

bbc, multiple sclerosis (ms)

Source of news: bbc.com