By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 22, 2010
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Under intense pressure from patients, some U.S. doctors are cautiously testing a provocative theory that abnormal blood drainage from the brain may play a role in multiple sclerosis -- and that a surgical vein fix might help.
If it pans out, the approach suggested by a researcher in Italy could mark a vast change for MS, a disabling neurological disease long blamed on an immune system gone awry. But many patients frustrated by today's limited therapies say they don't have time to await the carefully controlled studies needed to prove if it really works and are searching out vein-opening treatment now -- undeterred by one report of a dangerous complication.
''This made sense and I was hell-bent on doing it,'' says Nicole Kane Gurland of Bethesda, Md., the first to receive the experimental treatment at Washington's Georgetown University Hospital, which is set to closely track how a small number of patients fare before and after using a balloon to widen blocked veins.
In Buffalo, N.Y., more than 1,000 people applied for 30 slots in a soon-to-start study of that sameangioplasty procedure. When the University at Buffalo team started a larger study a few months ago just to compare if bad veins are more common in MS patients than in healthy people -- not to treat them -- more than 13,000 patients applied.
The demand worries Georgetown neurologist Dr. Carlo Tornatore, who teamed with vascular surgeon Dr. Richard Neville in hopes of getting some evidence to guide his own patients' care.
''A lot of people are starting to go to fly-by-night places,'' says Tornatore. Doing this research takes time, he said. ''It's a marathon, not a 100-yard sprint. We have to be very careful.''
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