Archive for January 9th, 2010
Could Early Symptoms of MS Be Stratified to Give Better Targeted Multiple Sclerosis Treatments? Introduction
January 9th, 2010 | 
Author: Multiple sclerosis presents in various ways and subsequently shows variable disease courses. If we knew early on what the disease course for Multiple Sclerosis would be then we could better target the medication in each individual case. To date it has been unpredictable right from disease onset but, knowing the disease course is of crucial importance in guiding treatment.
Now “The Department of Neurosciences” at Cardiff University has recently been looking into factor H as a biomarker for multiple sclerosis and the findings are promising.
Effective and accessible biomarkers are needed in order to stratify (separate into groups) patients and inform treatment. The team at Cardiff University decided to look into factor H as such a marker. Regulator factor H, has recently been implicated as a biomarker in other chronic inflammatory central nervous system conditions. Could it identify or predict specific pathological processes and outcomes in multiple sclerosis?
Method
They measured factor H in blood serum from 350 patients with multiple sclerosis classified according to disease course and relapse status. Controls were found for variables including disease duration, age, gender, disability and treatment. I have decided not to go into the full method in this document as the details will be somewhat turgid to the average reader. However, the findings are fairly clear and very encouraging.