MS: New drug proven to slow brain shrinkage

A new clinical trial for the drug ibudilast offers much-needed hope for people living with multiple sclerosis — a neurological condition that affects primarily women and has limited treatment options.

The results of the trial, which were published in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggest that the drug can effectively slow down brain atrophy, or shrinkage.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune condition that affects the central nervous system.

In MS, the immune system does not recognize the protective sheath of myelin that surrounds the nerve cells and attacks it.

This damages nerve cells, causing symptoms such as muscle weakness, numbness, chronic pain, and coordination problems, among others.

Brain atrophy is one of the hallmarks of this neurodegenerative condition and a good predictor of how the disease will progress. Higher rates of brain shrinkage have been shown to correlate with worsening symptoms in people with progressive MS.

MS does not yet have a cure, and treatment options that can slow the progression of the disease are limited. A new clinical trial proposes the drug ibudilast as a new treatment candidate that can slow down the atrophy of the brain.

Dr. Robert J. Fox, a neurologist at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, led the randomized trial, which compared the drug with a placebo in 255 participants.

This is wonderful news for MS sufferers, have any readers heard of this new treatment before?