MS therapy will take time: Doctor

This doctor tells a more real story about this experimental treatment and how long the process is going to take.  First things first and they have identified the need to best define and test for CCSVI.  The study needs ethics approval before commencing to find out how to accurately and reliably define venous abnormalities which may or may not be related to M.S.!!!  There is a great deal of work to do before considering a clinical trial.  Time will pass.  They may conclude the treatment is too speculative to even merit clinical trials.  Meantime, desperate sufferers are booking flights to foreign venues where the red tape is by-passed for a price.

I'm seeing advertisements offering MRI testing for blocked veins which, according to the theory behind liberation treatment, are linked to thew disease.

Dr. Knox is saying that the theory may or may not be testable for a few years because so much needs to be done to complete the science of the theory.


MS therapy will take time: Doctor

MS therapy will take time: Doctor

POSTMEDIA NEWSAUGUST 26, 2010

Saskatoon researcher Dr. Katherine Knox urged multiple sclerosis patients to have patience Wednesday, as a clinical trial of the so-called "liberation treatment" is years down the road, despite promised funding from the Saskatchewan government.

The biggest difficulty her team faces, she said, is that they don't know how to test patients to see if they have the blocked veins which, according to the theory behind liberation treatment, are linked to the disease.

"The problem is that at the present time, we do not know how to accurately and reliably define venous abnormalities that may or may not be related to MS," said Knox, director of Saskatoon's MS Clinic and the Cameco MS Neuroscience Research Centre, a research unit of the University of Saskatchewan.

Her team's priority right now is to proceed with a joint study with the University of British Columbia that will look at how to best define and test for chronic cerebral spinal venous insufficiency (CCSVI) -- a term coined by Italian vascular surgeon Dr. Paolo Zamboni to describe vein blockages he observed in MS patients. That study is close to getting ethics approval at UBC and will then need approval from the U of- before it begins enrolling subjects.

A number of provinces have joined Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall in calling for clinical trials of the procedure, in which veins are inflated using balloon angioplasty, restoring blood flow away from the brain. Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Quebec, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island, as well as the Yukon, have indicated interest in the idea.