New hope for people with Multiple Sclerosis

A new drug developed to treat leukaemia may be a powerful new weapon against Multiple Sclerosis, researchers say.

Alemtuzumab appears to stop progression of the condition in people with early stage active relapsing-remitting MS and may even enable repair of previous damage.

In a three year study of 334 patients involved in the trial, the drug cut the number of attacks of disease by 74% more than the reduction achieved by conventional Beta Interferon therapy.

People on the trial who received the drug also recovered some function that had been thought to be permanently lost, and as a result were less disabled after three years than at the beginning of the study.

Lee Dunster, Head of Research at the MS Society, said, "This is the first drug that has shown the potential to halt and even reverse the debilitating effects of MS and this news will rightly bring hope to people living with the condition day in, day out.

"More work is needed to prove the drug's long-term effectiveness and we are very much looking forward to the results of the next stage of this important research."

12.01.09
This article was taken from Edition 23 of MS Cymru's newsletter, MS Linc www.mssociety.org.uk/wales

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