This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

Back in 2009, there was a single poster presentation at ECTRIMS, by Dr. Zamboni. The presence of CCSVI at ECTRIMS has been growing year by year. When the majority of the research presented is negative, it's hard to be excited about that, especially when we've seen more positive findings presented elsewhere.

Dr. Hubbard has a letter from Dr. Sinan repudiating the work of the neurologist partially associated with his study: http://hubbardfoundation.blogspot.com/

He lists the abstracts but it is hard to make much of more ultrasound studies with inconclusive or negative results. There was a cadaver study of normal people showing normal extracranial veins, but those researchers did not also look at MS patients, or at least not in this abstract. There is a new tool called photoplethysmography that can measure blood flow in the capillaries of the brain, and they tested it after compressing the IJV in MS patients and they found abnormalities. There is Dr. Fox's work on hydration, which seems to aim to write off CCSVI abnormalities in flow as being the result of dehydration. Dr. Simka compared ultrasound to catheter venography in MS patients and normals and found that it correlated poorly. It's interesting that he had normal controls for the invasive catheter venography, we have not seen much about how these veins look in normal healthy people.

Here's more on photoplethysmography:
http://mediterranews.org/2012/10/sclero ... cerebrale/

You might need to have your browser translate it from the Italian. I do not fully understand it even once it's translated. The researchers were measuring blood flow in the microcirculation of the frontal cortex. Then they compressed the jugular veins. This led to an increase in cerebral blood volume in the frontal cortex microcirculation. In pwMS, it was a mild increase in cerebral blood volume of about 8.3 au, and in healthy controls it was an increase of about 42.5 au. Okay. In the MS patients, would blocking the jugulars lead to less of an increase of volume in the front cortex microcirculation because the flow was going at a slower rate and so any congestion happened more slowly? Or was the front cortex microcirculation already congested, and so there was less ability for those blood vessels to increase in volume? Or did blocking the jugulars not block the flow as much because the flow is already being rerouted into collateral veins such as the verts and the jugulars carry a smaller percentage of our cerebral blood flow? According to the authors, this technique was a way to measure flow-pressure in the frontal cortex tiny blood vessels, and the conclusion is that people with MS have a lower flow pressure there, which means we would be more affected by a small increase in the resistance of the extracranial veins. Still not sure I understand this.