Fox Reports: No Link Between MS, Narrow Blood Vessels...And a Neurologist's Counter View - facebook prikbord

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(Ken has also posted on this topic here)

Fox News today has an article describing a new study that provides more evidence that MS is not caused by venous hypertension, or CCSVI. Dr. Ellen Marder from the Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center led a review of the current literature on chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency and concluded they are

"unable to fnd any convincing data to suggest that narrowing blood vessels in CCSVI are behind MS"

As a result, Dr. Marder and colleagues are suggesting MS patients not undergo diagnostic testing or treatment for CCSVI. They amplified this conclusion after conducting another study -this time examining

ultrasound images of 18 MS patients, and another 11 non-MS patients, concluding that CCSVI instances observed were not correlated to MS.

"We would not advise our patients to be tested for this or act on any recommendations based on this sort of testing."

As a statistician I have to say that this seems like a fairly dramatic and definitive conclusion to base on such a small sample size.

A Different Analysis

Marder's content analysis and conclusions are in sharp contrast to neurologist Dr. Bryce Weir (a retired neurovascular surgeon who is the former Chief of Neurosurgery and Director of the Brain Research Institute of the Pritzker School of Medicine, is Professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta as well as Vice-President of Medical Affairs at the University of Calgary) who also undertook review of the CCSVI literature - it appeared in the Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences, titled "Multiple Sclerosis: A Vascular Etiology?" read the entire paper here. Dr. Weir concluded

"The possibility that venous reflux, reversal of flow, and venous hypertensionare the primary inciting causes of at least some forms of MS is currently a defensible hypothesis."

trials of angioplasty/stenting are justified in selected cases in view of the biological plausibility of the concept

..and that trials of angioplasty/stenting are justified in view of the biological plausibility of the concept.

Timothy Coetzee, chief research officer at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, did not dismiss Marder's apparent debunking of the CCSVI theory completely, saying "In my mind the jury's still somewhat out on what it means for MS."

Another interventional neurologist agrees with Dr. Weir - Dr. Daniel Morales is treating patients for CCSVI at Hospital Angeles in Mexico, where experience with more than 400 patients has resulted in a treatment protocol that has excellent long term prognosis (reduced chance of restenosis). Learn more here and here.