This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Knowledge & Support Community

Hello... I am new here, although I have been interested in alternative treatments for MS for many years and have never done any of the standard MS drugs as they did not seem to me to be very effective

This new treatment of Dr. Zamboni's is the first thing that has made sense to me, but I do have a number of questions that is about abnormal iron metabolism I am wondering how many people have Celtic backgrounds in their ancestry... I started doing research on hemochromatosis and was amazed to find out that one in six Irish potentially have genetic problems with iron metabolism in that they accumulate it... Northern Ireland has the highest MS rate in the world I believe, and I cannot believe that nobody has wondered about iron in the brain of MS patients before Zamboni... especially since there is clearly a genetic component to developing MS. When I was diagnosed the neurologist asked me where my ancestors came from and I answered the County Cork and he said oh yes, that is one of the world hot spots

Hello Merlyn and welcome!

Good question. My mum was born in Ireland so you've started me off thinking about Ancestory. Hmm......

My husband and two of his sisters have MS. Their grandfather was from County Cork.

Wanted to add that my husband's iron levels are low. He is on Tysabri for 2 years now and part of the program requires blood work every few months.

I just wrote my aunt to verify where my great-grandparents were from in Ireland... also have some Scots ancestry, another hotspot. I was just amazed when I started to do some research on hemochromatosis and found all of these organizations devoted to trying to alert that people with Irish ancestry are at great risk of iron overload! Some of Zamboni's older work is dealing with this iron/inflammation findings in MS patients... I have not been in the information loop really, and I am amazed at the number of people that already gone ahead and had the procedure done and I am awed by their bravery and for the most part results I am investigating IP6 to see how I feel when I chelate iron out of my system

http://hemochromatosiscny.org/irish_at_ ... n_overload

My grandparents came from the Isle of Man (tiny island between Ireland and Scotland) and Scotland, so geographic cousins to Ireland!

I'm 3/4 Irish. My grandfather was German.

The information being presented here in this forum is just so INTERESTING! So many people with so many different symptoms, and yet we keep coming up with commonalities! My maiden name is Irish and my folks, had always said we were Irish, English and French in that order! But we really know very little about my dad's family and they were the Irish in the mix.
Lora

Oops - accidentally posted this as a new topic....should've been a reply to this thread

My brother and I have high iron levels, though are pale-faced, and don't eat a lot of iron-rich foods. Ancestry is irish/scottish (predominantly Scottish). These regions have long been known to have a high incidence of MS:

According to the UK MS website:

'In Scotland, there is 137 per cent more MS than in England and Wales'.

In particular, Shetland and Orkney districts have four times the incidence of MS as mainland Scotland (1 in every 250 people from Shetland/Orkney have MS)

http://www.msrc.co.uk/index.cfm?fuseact ... ageid=2325

Scot Swede Irish English Danish French. The usual mix lol.

My husband is Irish, blood from County Cork, I believe...

This is the first time I have ever considered ancestry or genetics with MS - I've always read over it. I'm half Irish, half Lebanese. My mom (Irish) and family are directly from County Cork (Donoughmore). I'm 1st gen USA. Weird creepy and interesting.

Where my partner comes from, the folks are supposed to be alamans. (they alamans settled the high alpine valleys here in the 9th century) but the native inhabitants were celts (also archeologicaly proven).
I was told that in Oberwallis the MS rate was clearly over the average, although pretty healthy living conditions (there are here places with NO pollution at all, but she has been living a long time in Bern)...
dunno...

Hmm, Scotch and German Swiss And can go a long ways back in genealogy. Never been mentioned that anyone had MS or even something similar even in our distant past. Slainte, Mark

Well, in Middle Age, they were just called "disabled"...
And other dideases show/have shown similar symptoms (like syphillis prior to peniciline),
don't you think?

Ella's father is a Scott and I am half Flemish and half English. Additionally her paternal grandparents were first cousins and therefore more likely to pass on faulty genes.

There was some research done on a different kind of chronic disease namely the leukeamia that my husband suffered; they found out that people of indian and pakistani origin were more likely to have Chronic Lymphcystic Leukaemia than the rest of the world's population. They discovered that the cultural habit of marrying within the family (ie cousins and other close relatives) was a likely cause of this propensity to CLL. Maybe the same thing is happening with MS.

There is also evidence that MS exists in higher concentration in places where there is a large number of immigrants from Scotland and Ireland, namely Canada for one. All this points to the disease coming with the people rather than caused by the environment, although there is also evidence that there is less MS in the countries closer to the equator, so maybe a vitamin D element...