The Reinert family during a visit to Disney World. A new treatment at BVRMC allows MS sufferer Angie to live a more active lifestyle with her family. It was during a jog with her husband where he kept telling her to pick up her right foot that she realized something wasn't right. She had felt many strange symptoms individually over a six month time period - double vision, ear infection, tingling in her legs - but it wasn't until she listed them all in the same sentence that she realized something was happening to her body. Her family doctor ordered a spinal tap and MRI, which came back positive for multiple sclerosis. Two years ago, even walking had become very difficult for the woman who had always led an active lifestyle, and a neurologist suggested she may need a cane. Angie said, "I'm too young for a cane. I'm not giving up!" She had heard about a new treatment, TYSABRI, during a MS support group meeting. One member had found great success with improving mobility and reducing fatigue. TYSABRI is a treatment for relapsing forms of MS. It has been proven to reduce MS flare-ups and slow physical disability progression. … Continue reading →

Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Week will be held March 11-17 with events planned during the week in the greater Rochester area. As part of the effort to raise awareness about MS, Rochester's City Hall will be lit up orange. Mayor Tom Richards joined members of the National MS Upstate Chapter Monday morning to talk about the importance of the initiative. "I have personal friends who have suffered from MS, so I know what it can mean and what it can mean to people who have to live with it," he said. Tisha Sarnowski of East Irondequoit is one of 2,700 people in the greater Rochester area living with MS. She was diagnosed with the disease at 24. "I think I cried atthat point intime and from there it wastreatment options," she said. Multiple scerlosis attacks the central nervous system, interrupting flow of information from the brain to the body. "Being diagnosed early gave me the benefit of having treatment options," said Sarnowski. There is no cure for MS, but Sarnowski says raising awareness about the disease has helped improve her treatments. When she was first diagnosed, Sarnowski received daily injections. Today, she goes for and IV treatment once a month. In … Continue reading →

MIKE BONNICKSEN photo Deanna Kirkpatrick shares a laugh with a guest while recording apodcast. (Full-size photo)(All photos) To treat multiple sclerosis, try acupuncture or herbs. Or place your hope in a new oral drug called BG-12. Or one of the other drugs whose ads appear on your browser when you look up MS on WebMD. Or consider restoring your mobility with nutrition. Or snakevenom. While theres no cure for multiple sclerosis, theres no shortage of information and advice online about the disease good, bad and ugly, said Deanna Kirkpatrick, 45, an East Wenatchee woman who helps create three podcasts aboutMS. Shes trying to be the good. She uses the podcasts to pursue answers to her own questions and to those of the thousands of people whove tuned in online since she helped launch Multiple Sclerosis Unplugged just over a year ago. The shows have been heard nearly 30,000 times by people around theworld. The Internet has changed the way people get information about their health and influenced their medical decisions, especially for people with chronic conditions such asMS. Among many studies on the subject, a report released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in 2007 said 86 percent … Continue reading →

Public release date: 11-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Christie Corbett newsmedia@mssm.edu 212-241-9200 The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine People with multiple sclerosis (MS) who were treated with combination therapy did not see significant clinical benefit over those treated with single drug therapy, but combination therapy did reduce the development of new lesions, according to an international research team led by The Mount Sinai Medical Center. The findings, part of the largest-ever MS trial sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, are published in the March 11 issue of Annals of Neurology. In the Phase III CombiRx trial, researchers led by Fred Lublin, MD, of The Mount Sinai Medical Center, sought to determine if Glatiramer Acetate (GA) and Interferon Beta-1a (IFN), the two most commonly-prescribed drugs for relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS), were more effective in combination than as monotherapies. The results showed that while combination therapy was no better than monotherapy, patients who took combination therapy had a reduction in new lesions on MRI scan. "This is the first NIH-sponsored, multi-center, comparative trial evaluating the benefits of both combination therapy and monotherapy in MS," said lead author Fred Lublin, MD, Director of the Corinne Goldsmith … Continue reading →