Professor Anat Achiron of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine and vice-dean of research at Sheba Medical Center has uncovered a new way of detecting MS in the blood.
The findings, just published in the journal Neurobiology of Disease, are expected to pave the way for a diagnosis of MS before symptoms can appear, allowing for earlier treatment.
“We are not yet able to treat people with MS to prevent the onset of the disease but knowledge is power,” Professor Achiron says. “Every time we meet a new patient exhibiting symptoms of MS, we must ask ourselves how long this has been going on. We can diagnose MS by brain MRI, but we’ve never been able to know how ‘fresh’ the disease is,” she says.
If doctors can predict the onset of MS early enough, intervention therapies using immunomodulatory drugs such as Copaxone or beta-interferon drugs that stave off MS symptoms, might be used.
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Tags: Neurology
