![]() A score of 6, for example, means a person needs to use a cane or brace intermittently or on one side to walk about 100 meters with or without resting. Not Just Slowed Disability, but Improvement in EDSS Scoreĭisability in the study was measured with the Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS), which is a 10-point scale. ![]() Those in the medication group received anti-inflammatory disease-modifying therapies (DMT), such as beta-interferons ( Avonex, Betaseron), azathioprine (Azason), glatiramer acetate (Copaxone, Glatopa), mitoxantrone (Novantrone), fingolimod (Gilenya), natalizumab (Tysabri), methotrexate (Rheumatrex), teriflunomide (Aubagio), cyclophosphamide (Cytoxan), dimethyl fumarate (Tecfidera), and alemtuzumab (Lemtrada). ![]() The retrospective analysis involved 79 people with active secondary-progressive MS who received stem cell transplants and 1,975 people from the MS registry in Italy who were treated with MS drugs. “Our results are encouraging, because while current treatments for secondary-progressive MS have modest or small benefits, our study found stem cell transplants may not only delay disability longer than many other MS medications, but they may also provide a slight improvement in symptoms,” said study author Matilde Inglese, MD, PhD, of the University of Genoa in Italy and a professor of neurology, radiology, and neuroscience at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, in a statement. Most people with MS are first diagnosed with relapsing-remitting MS, marked by symptom flare-ups followed by periods of remission, but many people with relapsing-remitting MS eventually transition to secondary-progressive MS, which does not have wide swings in symptoms but rather a steady and slow worsening of the illness. New research published online in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, has found that people with active SPMS - meaning they continue to experience MS relapses or develop new lesions, as seen on their MRIs - who received stem-cell transplantation were slower in accumulating disability than those taking anti-inflammatory disease-modifying therapies (DMT). When it comes to treating secondary-progressive multiple sclerosis (SPMS), a more advanced stage of the disease, little research has focused on autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplants (HSCT), which use healthy blood stem cells from a person’s own body (autologous) to replace diseased cells. Blood cells formed in bone marrow called hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) have been shown to delay disability when transplanted in people with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS).
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