Recently, this winter following an intrepid nosedive from two-meter height I was left with a dodgy right knee and an inability to walk unaided. The advice was to rest up and take pain killers, and then more painkillers just in case. Let’s face it I’m no spring chicken and the mind-numbing inactivity that follows would only be tolerable in cadaver. Whoever said doctors make the worst...
Demyelination to Remyelination
By Dominic Shadbolt Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a demyelinating disease therefore a drug that induces remyelination ought to cure it. Pretty obvious. No? Much in the way some people talk about HSCT (Stem Cells) as if they will fix everything with everyone I get the sense that remyelination drugs carry a similar expectation of a cure. In some cases the results may be nothing short of...
I’d call it post-traumatic growth, actually: Experiences of PTSD in people living with MS
I’m a second-year PhD student at QMUL looking at people’s experiences of informing research through planning, designing and delivering (aka patient and public involvement, aka PPI) in the field MS. Last year I wrote a blog post reviewing an article about how an MS diagnosis impacts people. Back in December 2020, Shift.ms posted a survey asking people about their experiences of PTSD, which for...
Sepsis in MS patients and Intensive care admissions
Sepsis (or blood infection) is a dangerous thing. I remember first realising this as a Junior doctor in respiratory medicine, when an audit of pneumonia admissions revealed a mortality of 60%. Sadly, this has not improved by much even with the latest antibiotics. As I rotated through, transplant medicine, haem-oncology, and finally into ICU, I found myself forever pre-occupied with watching the...
How to recover from an MS relapse
A relapse is one scary experience. The tendency of traditional medicine in the past was to advocate bed rest and the patient to adopt a ‘sick role’. The lack of research in this area meant that doctors were left to adopt beliefs that were outdated by modern standards; they truly believed that bed rest during an MS relapse helped with the recovery process. This would make sense if in...
A few cigigies a day doesn’t keep the mouse-MS away
I dont’ report on studies in the Beasties much these days, but this story made me think a few things If you smoke you have an increased chance of developing MS compared to if you don’t smoke. I have to say you are at an increased risk of many other things if you smoke. Is it surprising? Well not really because if the only question you ask in a survey essentially focuses on the...
It Shouldn’t be like This (But it is)
Dominic Shadbolt () It Shouldn’t Be Like This (But It Is) Go with me on this… Someone finds a funny lump on their testicle or breast so they call the GP to book an appointment and get it checked out. Once the GP has checked it out and is suspicious, the person is catapulted onto a cancer pathway that presumes it is cancer until proven otherwise. This happened to me recently, and in the UK...
Loneliness and MS: Could e-health be a Solution?
By Rachel Horne For people with multiple sclerosis, we know this much is true. Dealing with the physical side of the disease is just one part of the struggle. Feeling alone is another. Not only are people with MS significantly more prone to loneliness compared to the general population, but strong evidence shows it also puts our brain health and overall health at risk. It can lead to depression...
Improving MS outcomes: The smoke in our eyes!
Many of you will have registered themselves on the UK MS registry. This is an online registry that aims to monitor the motor, mood and treatment status of pwMS based on what we call patient-reported outcomes or PRO’s. This means that pwMS voluntarily fill out simplified MS questionnaires every 6 months after being prompted by MS email spam of the most honourable kind. Based on the responses of...
DMT tool vs. The Flawed Milky Way
Urbanisation is by and large a good thing, and I wouldn’t want to miss the buzzing environment of people, culture and, last but not least, cuisine for a second. However, it comes with an annoying side effect: more dangerous city streets. Last week, I had to experience this the hard way. Decennia of intelligent road design couldn’t protect me from being hit by a car while going out for a run. How...