Category Archives: Multiple Sclerosis

Is Sulforaphane ‘Neuroprotective’?

Leave a reply

Recently, the protective effects of sulforaphane on brain health were also considerably studied, where the studies have further extended to several neurological diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, autism spectrum disorder, and schizophrenia.

Animal and cell studies that employ sulforaphane against memory impairment and AD-related pre-clinical biomarkers on amyloid-β, tau, inflammation, oxidative stress, and neurodegeneration are summarized, and plausible neuroprotective mechanisms of sulforaphane to help prevent AD are discussed.

The increase in pre-clinical evidences consistently suggests that sulforaphane has a multi-faceted neuroprotective effect on AD pathophysiology. The anti-AD-like evidence of sulforaphane seen in cells and animals indicates the need to pursue sulforaphane research for relevant biomarkers in AD pre-symptomatic populations.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7999245/

FDA approves Roche’s injectable version of blockbuster multiple sclerosis drug

Leave a reply

Ocrevus should be available as a 10-minute injection starting in October

Swiss pharma giant Roche won approval from the Food and Drug Administration on Friday for an injectable version of its blockbuster multiple sclerosis therapy Ocrevus, cutting down the time needed to treat patients and potentially staving off growing competition.

The approval was driven by the results of a late-stage trial, OCARINA II, in which the company showed that delivering Ocrevus as a 10-minute injection beneath the skin worked as well as the current approach, an hours-long intravenous infusion.

David Jones, medical director at Roche subsidiary Genentech, told STAT that the injectable drug should be available starting in October. The announcement means multiple sclerosis patients will be able to get the treatment in neurologist’s offices and won’t need to travel to specialized infusion centers. The approval could also help Roche fend off competing multiple sclerosis products from Novartis and TG Therapeutics.

Ocrevus is approved to treat relapsing and primary progressive forms of multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that damages nerve fibers throughout the brain and spinal cord. The drug is an antibody that latches onto CD20, a molecule made by B cells, a type of immune cell. It’s Roche’s best-selling product, and brought in more than $7 billion in sales last year.

Patients need two infusions a year, and each of those appointments can last up to six hours. To cut that time down, Roche partnered with Halozyme, a San Diego biotech focused on drug delivery. The company has developed a technology that breaks down sugar molecules in the skin so that intravenous drugs can be delivered as injections.

https://www.statnews.com/2024/09/13/fda-approves-roche-injectable-multiple-sclerosis-drug-ocrevus/

What causes multiple sclerosis—and why are women more at risk?

Leave a reply

“Around 2.9 million people worldwide—roughly one million in the United States—have multiple sclerosis or MS; Applegate and The Sopranos star Jamie-Lynn Sigler are two of them. In their podcast, the actresses speak candidly about their experiences with the disease.
MS affects the central nervous system, the brain and spinal cord. The immune system attacks sheaths of a material called myelin that surround nerve fibers. Like insulation on wires, myelin protects nerves and helps transmit signals. But when myelin deteriorates, the nerve fibers underneath are exposed. This disrupts the brain’s communication and leaves behind lesions, which can cause a myriad of symptoms as the disease progresses.”

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/multiple-sclerosis-ms-cause-treatment-ebv

Apple Vision Pro Game Changer for Disabled

Leave a reply

The headset is already changing disabled users’ lives.

In her childhood bedroom, Maxine Collard had a PC connected to a cathode-ray tube monitor so massive it bowed her desk into a smile that grew deeper every year. Collard has oculocutaneous albinism, which means that her hair is naturally bleach white, her complexion maximally fair, and she has uncorrectably low visual acuity with limited depth perception. In order to see the screen, she had to crane her neck until her face was two inches from the monitor.

When Collard was in middle school, her mother bought an iMac for the family. Collard spent hours messing around on the new machine, her nose pressed almost to the glass. One day, deep in the computer’s accessibility settings, she discovered that if she held down the control key while spinning the mouse’s scroll wheel, she could instantaneously zoom the entire screen to whatever magnification level she wanted. There was a rudimentary magnifier app on her Windows computer, but she found the interface difficult to use, and the low-res image on the zoomed-in PC screen, she said, was pixelated, hard to read, “disgusting.” Her experience on the iMac, which allowed her to magnify the entire screen into a much clearer image, came as a revelation.

Earlier this year, Collard had a similar aha moment when she tried the Apple Vision Pro for the first time. Some critics of the AVP were skeptical of a device that pressed two high-resolution micro-OLED screens within millimeters of one’s eyes for hours at a time. But to Collard, the ability to (as she put it) “strap an iPad to my face” was instantly appealing.

See Link for more:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/apple-vision-pro-disabled-users.html

Obesity medications linked to reduced chance of MS in real world

Leave a reply

TL:DR Mounjaro, Zepbound, Wegovy and Ozempic linked to reduced chance of getting MS!

From the Article:

The use of obesity medications — approved drugs for treating diabetes and promoting weight loss — is associated with a reduced chance of developing multiple sclerosis (MS), according to real-world data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a study found.

In particular, medicines that activate a receptor called GLP-1, which lowers blood glucose or blood sugar levels, all showed potential protective effects against MS.

“These findings suggest a potential for repurposing these medications for MS,” the researchers wrote.

Their study, “Exploring the association between weight loss-inducing medications and multiple sclerosis: insights from the FDA adverse event reporting system database,” was published in the journal Therapeutic Advances in Neurological Disorders.

Obesity is a well-known driver of chronic inflammation in the body, which can help set the stage for the development of MS, an inflammatory disorder affecting the brain and spinal cord.

Research has shown that obesity in early childhood or adolescence increases the risk of MS. It also worsens outcomes for newly diagnosed patients, and is linked to less favorable responses to disease-modifying therapies.

5 conditions MS patients may have years before diagnosis

Leave a reply

People with multiple sclerosis (MS) are more likely to experience depression, sexual dysfunction, constipation, inflammation of the bladder, and urinary tract infection in the five years leading up to their diagnosis than those without the disease, a study found.

These findings parallel growing evidence that there’s a prodromal phase, in which certain unspecific symptoms become evident, sometimes years before the classic symptoms of MS emerge.


https://multiplesclerosisnewstoday.com/5-symptoms-ms-patients-years-before-diagnosis-idd-study/