As with any elite athlete, Omphroy, a 21-year-old rookie defender with Toronto FC, has had to overcome challenges to get here. But his have been on a different scale — fears he was going blind at age 17 as he tried to crack the lineup of a professional soccer team in Portugal; enduring what felt like electric shocks through his body and the loss of feeling in one foot last year.
That second episode sent him from chiropractors to doctors to specialists. Their conclusion had an impact that goes well beyond the playing field.
Omphroy has multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that affects the brain and central nervous system and can have debilitating symptoms.
“I was shocked,” Omphroy recalls of the diagnosis, which came from a neurologist in February of last year following an MRI. “I was like: ‘I can’t believe I have a disease that has left people in wheelchairs.’
“Just the thought of that, of me having to be in a wheelchair sometime in my life, is scary. You hear about a friend of a friend who knows somebody who has it, but you never think it’s something that’s going to happen to you.”
Far from ending his dreams of playing professional soccer, Omphroy, a native of California’s San Francisco Bay area, firmly believes his disease has, in many ways, made him better.
His diet has improved dramatically, more greens and fish, no alcohol or caffeine. Each night, he injects Copaxone, a drug used to treat his form of the disease, and ensures that he gets enough sleep to train the next day.
Tetsuro Fujita’s eureka moment about a Himalayan fungus came in 1985. As the scientist was driving over a bridge between Japan’s Shikoku and Honshu islands on his way to conduct research on traditional herbal remedies, Fujita was contemplating ways to keep patients’ immune systems from rejecting transplanted organs. He was particularly intrigued by the example of a parasitic fungus used in a Chinese medicinal soup. Known in Asia as “winter insect, summer plant,” the Cordyceps fungus invades an insect larva during winter, feeds on it for months, and then grows out of the host by summer. Fujita suddenly realized that the fungus must be suppressing the immune system of the insect larvae on which it grew to maturity.
His research on Cordyceps at Kyoto University eventually helped Japanese drugmaker Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma produce Gilenya, a treatment for multiple sclerosis that Novartis #NVS# licensed and began selling in the U.S. in October. UBS #UBS# says annual sales of the medicine, the first pill to treat the autoimmune disease afflicting more than 2 million people worldwide, may exceed $5 billion annually by 2018. That would rank it among the 10 best-selling drugs worldwide, based on data from researcher IMS Health. Mitsubishi Tanabe will likely book royalties equivalent to 10 percent of sales, based on the median of estimates by four analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News.
Updated guidelines from the American Academy of Neurology recommend plasma exchange (plasmapheresis) for the treatment of certain types of multiple sclerosis (MS) and other inflammatory neurological conditions, including Guillain-Barré syndrome and CIDP (chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy). Plasma exchange involves replacing the plasma (the liquid part of a person’s blood) with plasma from a donor. Plasma exchange removes factors in the blood’s plasma thought to play a role in these disorders. The time-consuming therapy involves separating the plasma from other blood components such as blood cells, replacing the plasma, and returning the other components. Risks may include infection, allergic reaction, and blood-clotting issues. The new guidelines, which appear in the Jan. 18 issue of Neurology, were last updated in 1996. While many of the core recommendations remain the same, the new guidelines state that there is insufficient evidence to support or refute the use of plasma exchange in the treatment of myasthenia gravis, a chronic condition that causes muscles to weaken easily, and pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders that result from streptococcal infection. More about Guidelines Recommend Plasma Exchange for MS
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Elizabeth Kinder was diagnosed with MS three years ago. There is no cure for the disease, but a raft of trials provide hope for the 100,000 sufferers in the UK.
These are especially challenging times for sufferers of long-term degenerative diseases, in the face of cuts to research funding, huge changes to the way the NHS commissions services, and the biggest upheaval in the welfare system since 1945.
Trials are the best hope for sufferers, and Elizabeth was lucky to be accepted on a clinical trial at Charing Cross Hospital.
At Charing Cross she speaks to consultant neurologist Dr Richard Nicholas and Caroline D’Arcy, MS nurse at the hospital. She finds out why the unpredictability of MS makes sufferers especially vulnerable to benefits changes, and why the changes to NHS commissioning could make getting the right care more difficult.
She speaks to Jane Spink, director of policy and research at the MS Society, who reveals her concerns for MS research within the NHS.
And she talks to Alasdair Fraser about his experience of living with MS. He warns: “You just can’t afford to get ill from now on.”
Alasdair was diagnosed 16 years ago, when he was a 35-year-old advertising executive. He now uses a wheelchair, is unable to move his limbs, and his eyesight is deteriorating
Aaron Thompson has loved sports since he was in high school. Then, he was a keen basketball player. As a young adult, he continued to enjoy an athletic lifestyle, working out daily even after being diagnosed with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS), a disease of the central nervous system, when he was 23.
RRMS is characterized by clearly defined attacks followed by periods of partial or complete recovery.
“I was an energetic guy who happened to have multiple sclerosis,” Thompson says.
“The results seem very promising but we don’t have details,” he said, noting they will be presented in early 2011. “Then, we will be much smarter.”
Teva said the laquinimod study comparing efficacy against a placebo met the primary endpoint of reducing annualized relapse rates, and treatment with the drug significantly slowed progression of disability.
“We recommend that our patients should be as active as possible, keeping in mind that they need to be safe, whatever the activity,” says Trudy Campbell, one of only three nurse practitioners in Canada specializing in working with multiple sclerosis patients.
“Exercise, learning strategies to cope with stress, adequate nutrition, maintaining an ideal body weight and family support all play a role in living with MS,” she says. “Most important of all are being informed about the disease, having the appropriate health care team to assist with its management and learning to prioritize tasks and budget one’s energy to cope most effectively with whatever has to be done in a day.”
Nintendo Wii (pronounced ‘we’) is potentially revolutionising the way we exercise and making it a more interesting option for keeping fit and active between treatment sessions, which can involve friends and family. “As a neuro-physio with 17 years’ experience, I know the difficulties which arise when clients do not regularly practice recommended exercises,” says Colin. “But here at Physio Matters, we’ve been successfully using Nintendo Wii for over 18 months to enhance clients’ enjoyment of exercise and the benefits they can gain as a result.”