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In a recent study, led by Ravi Menon of the Robarts Research Institute in Canada, researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine iron deposits in the brains of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. What Menon's team found was a connection between the amount of iron present in the brain and the patient's level of disability.

http://www.healthline.com/health-news/m ... ain-111313

erinc14 wrote:In a recent study, led by Ravi Menon of the Robarts Research Institute in Canada, researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine iron deposits in the brains of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. What Menon's team found was a connection between the amount of iron present in the brain and the patient's level of disability.

http://www.healthline.com/health-news/m ... ain-111313

From the article:

Study Reveals Iron Deposits, No CCSVI

According to Menon, what they found was a “much higher level of iron—well above what you would expect in age-matched controls—in the MS patients’ brains.”

Researchers also looked at the diameter of the patients’ neck veins during the MRI scans. Insufficient drainage of the jugular veins is part of Dr. Paolo Zamboni’s theory of a phenomenon called chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency (CCSVI), which may contribute to nervous system damage in MS.

This study, along with other resent research, revealed no connection between vein drainage and MS.

“While iron in the brain correlates with the disability in the subjects, the iron in the brain does not correlate in any way with the actual diameter of the jugular veins in these patients,” explained Menon. “So the Zamboni hypothesis is incorrect insofar as iron is related to some kind of obstruction in their veins, but the fact is, there is iron at very early stages of MS.”

Menon’s group identified subtle changes in the brain's white matter in those with CIS, indicating that damage occurs even in the very early stages of MS. The white matter damage also correlated with the amount of iron in the brain, suggesting that iron plays a significant role in the MS disease process and resulting disability.

And just where did that iron come from? The rusty scalpels of modern doctors? The rust on the car ahead of you in a traffic jam? Or extravasation, maybe?

Re CCSVI:, it is vastly simple-minded to try to relate iron deposits to a vague "jugular diameter". Measured how exactly? What about intraluminal defects like webs, septa, etc., such as Dr. Fox's autopsy study found? What level exacly? Did anyone use measurements of reflux? Did they measure the azygus vein?

It is a premature conclusion in the extreme, perhaps even indicating prejudice, to say "...the Zamboni hypothesis is incorrect insofar as iron is related to some kind of obstruction in their veins..." What does jugular diameter have to do with obstructions? They could at least try to get "the Zamboni hypothesis" more correct before saying it is unrelated to iron in "MS".

It is perhaps an embarrassment for some prejudiced individuals, to find iron actually has a very early and lasting effect on "MS", but throwing in some perfunctory "jugular diameter" numbers and making those conclusions seems like more blather, protesting too much, tilting at windmills, and hunting Snarks.

Did the MRIs of the jugular vein extend all the way down to the confluens with the brachiocephalic vein? I remember in the early days, people would get an MRV done for CCSVI but it would not include that area of the vein, which is where abnormalities of the valves are commonly found.

It's also quite possible that Dr. Zamboni, not being a neurologist or a physicist, did not consider the effects of focalized hypertension in weakening the blood-brain barrier, or the impact on cerebrospinal fluid flow and drainage, and so his theory concentrated on the iron deposits that are at play in chronic venous insufficiency of the legs, and not the other complicated sequellae that may result from outflow obstructions of the cerebrospinal venous system. There is still building to be done upon the foundation of Dr. Zamboni's ideas and revising as more is learned. Increased iron deposits as a result of diapedesis is only one part of the theory, so even if that were invalidated, which this research does not seem to meet the bar required to do so, it still would not invalidate the whole.

Whenever they find damage early in MS, it is never clear if that damage was present prior to the onset of MS, as it would be if the damage were a result of a lifetime lived with increasingly worsening CCSVI. The assumption is always that the damage was wrought by the MS, when it may have been wrought by the CCSVI.