Prof G do you think disability improvement is a reasonable treatment goal? NEDADI = no evident disease activity and disability improvement Two weeks ago one of my patients with PPMS, who we treated with off-label subcutaneous cladribine, came for her annual follow-up appointment. Despite being treated with cladribine over 2 years ago she has unfortunately progressed from EDSS 5.5 to 6.5. Her...
Prof G has the MS community go it wrong? In this week’s NEJM there is an insightful perspective by Louise Aronson on ageing and driving. Aronson. Don’t Ruin My Life — Aging and Driving in the 21st Century. N Engl J Med 2019; 380:705-707. Louise quotes the American poet Donald Hall, who explains in Essays After Eighty how life is irrevocably and excruciatingly changed when a person must let go of...
Prof G what can be done to manage my hyperthyroidism if I want to fall pregnant? Carbimazole is associated with an increased risk of congenital malformations, especially when administered in the first trimester of pregnancy and at high doses. Women of childbearing potential should use effective contraception during treatment with carbimazole. Carbimazole: increased risk of congenital...
As promised, I now provide you with a link that will provide you with full and free access to the paper for fifty days. You can download, read and come back to ask questions. Here is the link.
Enjoy.
COI Multiple This was not company sponsored
Why can’t we use anti-CD20 therapies as immune constitution therapies? For some years we have been promoting our Barts-MS Essential DMT list to treat people with MS (pwMS) in resource-poor environments. One of the big guns on our list has been rituximab (anti-CD20). One of the problems is that rituximab at a dose of 1g every 6 months is still too expensive to accessible for the vast...
Figure: To-and-fro bi-directionality of CSF flow in the brainBy © Nevit Dilmen, CC BY-SA 3.0 I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I read this article. Starting out in science, one is considered smart when following the trends of the populist. As a seasoned scientist, when one continues to work in this way, one is just not being too clever. I am not being disparaging of those who...
Do you take dietary supplements? If yes, are you prepared to review what you are taking and ask yourself if you need to spend the money taking something that is not supported by any evidence? In the US the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently announced measures to regulate dietary supplements. The FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said: “It’s clear that the US Food and Drug...
Did anyone watch ‘Skint Britain: friends without benefits’ on Channel 4 in the week? ‘Skint Britain: friends without benefits’ looks at the rollout and impact of the new Universal Credit scheme for British people who are unemployed or unable to work. The ‘big idea’ behind universal credit is to incentivise people who are unemployed to work or at least to be shown to be actively seeking work in...
Time between expanded disability status scale (EDSS) scores.Zurawski J, Glanz BI, Chua A, Lokhande H, Rotstein D, Weiner H, Engler D, Chitnis T, Healy BC. Mult Scler Relat Disord. 2019 Feb 5;30:98-103. BACKGROUND: Although the expanded disability status scale (EDSS) is the most commonly used measure of disability for multiple sclerosis, measurement of disability accumulation is complex...
Longitudinally persistent cerebrospinal fluid B-cells can resist treatment in multiple sclerosis.Greenfield AL, Dandekar R, Ramesh A, Eggers EL, Wu H, Laurent S, Harkin W, Pierson NS, Weber MS, Henry RG, Bischof A, Cree BA, Hauser SL, Wilson MR, von Büdingen HC. JCI Insight. 2019 Feb 12. pii: 126599. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.126599. [Epub ahead of print] B-cells are key contributors to...
Why do MS lesions with an iron halo continue to expand? The slowly expanding MS lesion or SEL is where the money or lack of money is. In my post ‘explaining why you are getting worse despite being NEDA‘ I mention SELs as one of the reasons that underlie progressive MS and are largely unresponsive or poorly responsive, to standard DMTs. Danny Reich’s team at the NIH have...