CMAJ: Canadian trials to examine “liberation procedure” for multiple sclerosis
Talking about CMAJ: Canadian trials to examine “liberation procedure” for multiple sclerosis
Researchers at St. Joseph’s Healthcare will test Zamboni’s proposition. “I have no doubt that there is an auto-immune component to MS. But what Zamboni has done is he has raised the awareness again that the vascular component could be real,” Rodger says. “So it could be auto-immune with a vascular component. And who knows what else? We don’t know.”
Rodger says his team is looking to establish the prevalence of CCSVI by comparing subjects who have multiple sclerosis and with age- and gender-matched healthy people. Those 100 people will be put in four categories: primary progressive, secondary progressive, relapsing and remitting, and benign.
“Specifically, we are going to measure by ultrasound and try to mimic almost exactly, if not exactly, what Zamboni has done. We’re also going to use MR [magnetic resonance] imaging to look at the architecture of the veins,” Rodger says. “We’re trying to see whether MR is superior to ultrasound. It’s obviously a lot more expensive. But you see different things with MR than you see with ultrasound. So really, we’re going to do a comparison.”
The University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health has partnered with the University of Saskatchewan to undertake a similar research project.