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if steroids help MS....

Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 10:29 am
by mrhodes40
PAPER FOUND HERE
AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: Overall, corticosteroids significantly reduced rates of mortality, severe hearing loss and neurological sequelae. In adults with community-acquired bacterial meningitis, corticosteroid therapy should be administered in conjunction with the first antibiotic dose.
Just a comment added to point out that in this case the disease is a proven verified bacteria in the brain.

TO get cured the person needs antibiotics as well as steroids, but note that steroids are very beneficial, so much so that it is recommended they always be included with treatment. Brains are sensitive to inflammation and seem to over react with dangerous levels of inflammation when they are injured.

In fact if a person had steroids but no antibiotics they'd probably seem a lot better at least in the short term....

It is also true that in the case of spinal cord injury and stroke, two different kinds of brain injury that result in permanent disability, controlling some of the inflammation with steroids improves outcomes. Once again we see that the damage to the brain is accompanied by overactive inflammation that needs controlling with steroids even though we know the brain damage in those cases is NOT autoimmune but rather caused by a verifiable trauma we understand very well.

this is why knowing that steroids or things that suppress immunity seem to work in the short term does NOT prove MS is autoimmune. All it proves is that there is an inflammatory component that can be impacted and improved with steroids....just like meningitis, spinal cord injury and stroke.

So if CCSVI exists and we get damage to brain tissue, is it really surprising that steroids or immune suppression seems to help, at least in the short term?

Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 11:20 am
by Jamie
That's why Mel is in perfect shape.

HiCy has knocked out active inflammation (as evidenced by MRI), now she has the chance to have the underlying cause fixed too.

Double whammy - that's why I'm so hopeful she'll get some heat and fatigue relief.

Posted: Sat Jul 04, 2009 2:03 pm
by mrhodes40
So the way Mel knows from a patients perspective that hicy did not work is that she feel heat intolerance and fatigue? did those disappear early in in hicy temporarily? Her lesions appear to be essentially controlled but her symptoms are returning? Any functional changes informing her idea of hicy not being a complete answer?

I am just curious about how the decision that hicy was not enough was arrived at and what evidence you have to support it and do the JH doctors agree that hicy did not work?--I am really honestly just curious not pulling chains in any way--because when I write something like the post I started this thread with it is just literature review and opinion; speculative to wonder how CCSVI can be "it" in the face of what we seem to see in the literature.

I can add to it too in that stem cell transplants do not always work well either with a good number of people reactivating and worsening even if they do not get new lesions. One paper I saw out of the Netherlands had 9 0f 14 patients progressing significantly after stem cell and chemo treatment, one even dying, while only 5 did kind of OK. None however had new lesions but their disease was progressing.

FOUND HERE

A paper from my personal collection Wolfgang Bruck "Inflammatory demyelination is not central to the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis" he says that in autopsy of 4 patients who died after stem cell and chemo procedures all of them had brain atrophy caused by the procedure while none had any inflammatory activity at all.

Posted: Sun Jul 05, 2009 8:40 am
by chrishasms
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