loobie said
"there's no lifelong profit model"
zap said
I liked it too, but there should be another paper out there somewhere that digs more into the bias introduced by the role of the pharma companies
Here's the good thing: a stenosis is visible on venogram. If any one individal has it, they have it. In a way, the only studies that matter are the follow up studies on the patients treated to remove their stenosis. If those are positive, then we have a good reason to treat any stenosis we might be able to see even if:
someone does a study and says they only see reflux half the time
someone does a study and says they have 2 abnormals on healthy people
someone does a study and they say these stenoses are very small and not significant
someone does a study and says few MSers have 2 abnormals, most have one and lots of healthy people do too.
expert neuro's write opinion papers saying this is impossible.
None of it will matter. Once there is proof that removing a stenosis results in reduced symptoms or stabilisation or whatever, assuming that is the case here, then any other studies/speculation will be moot. All we have to do then is get the venograms and see IF we have a stenosis ourselves. Once you see one does any of that other stuff matter?
We are really lucky this has already passed to the phase where patients are already in trial having been treated with stenosis removl.
We are also lucky they
treated 100 people and removed their stenoses. If they had done 20 it would be really easy for the neuros to say that it was insignificant and meaningless and more studies needed, but 100 people with PROVEN stenosis or even stenoses is already a significant finding.
I mean think about it, all of those people had a significant blockage, significant enough to treat.
If you take the Dec '08 Zamboni paper, ALL of the MSers have stenosis on venogram. All of them.
Add to that this liberation study and know that of course all 100 of those people had them too; even if they used the same people from the other study and treated them all, they still had to get another 35 people to treat to get the numbers to 100.
If they used all new people it cold even be true that the 65 MSers from the Dec paper who had venograms and thus proven stenoses, PLUS the 100 people from the liberation study who obviously had them COULD mean that 165 MSers are now proven to have actual, visible-on-venogram stenosis.
All we have to do now is wait for the results of the liberation study to remove the stenosis and see if lesions reduce or whatever.
On the cool side: Jacobs neurological institute has a 3 tesla MRI so the pictures they get from the 4 American people they treated who are being followed there will provide some especially good data regarding how the lesion areas are impacted by the liberation procedure.
here's a link to a 3 tesla page...
http://www.eradimaging.com/site/article ... 26&mode=ce
if you read down note how they say they can do angiography with the MRI--venogams may get a LOT easier.[/b]