Media Weblink. CCSVI link to THALAMUS?

[NZer1]

From the transript on Facebook. "Iron builds in different structures of the brain...there are certain pathways where iron is building in MS...in thalamus and around venous area of pulvinar nucleus of thalamus, thanks to new technology. We need to understand this buildup with disability in MS."
[quote] from Ziv at the Media link today.


When I was first searching for answers to what was causing my early MS symptoms everything seemed to link to the thalamus. I think the reseachers are going in the right direction. Watch the space!!!!!!!!!!!

[cheerleader]

NZer1-
I agree! That was really cool to learn.
Here's some info on the pulvinar

The prominence of the posterior portion of the thalamus overlapping the superior colliculus. It receives projections from the auditory, somatosensory and visual cortex regions. It is involved in visual attention, suppression of irrelevant stimuli and utilizing information to initiate eye movements.
Millodot: Dictionary of Optometry and Visual Science, 7th edition. © 2009 Butterworth-Heinemann

Interesting to learn that this new SWI technology is really zeroing in on the area of iron deposition in the MS brain-
cheer

[mangio]

the children with ms load in these areas the most

[cheerleader]

Here's the abstract from the paper Dr. Haacke worked on-

AIM: In this paper, we seek to determine whether the iron deposition as seen by susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI) in the basal ganglia and thalamus of patients with multiple sclerosis is greater than the iron content measured in normal subjects (individuals unaffected by multiple sclerosis). As increased iron content may result from increased venous pressure, such information would add credence to the concept of Zamboni et al (1) that MS is caused by chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency. METHODS: Fourteen MS patients were recruited for this study with a mean age of 38 years ranging from 19 to 66 year-old. A velocity compensated 3D gradient echo sequence was used to generate SW images with a high sensitivity to iron content. We evaluated iron in the following structures: substantia nigra, red nucleus, globus pallidus, putamen, caudate nucleus, thalamus and pulvinar thalamus. Each structure was broken into two parts, a high iron content region and a low iron content region. The measured values were compared to previously established baseline iron content in these structures as a function of age. RESULTS: Twelve of fourteen patients had an increase in iron above normal levels and with a particular pattern of iron deposition in the medial venous drainage system that was associated with the confluence of the veins draining that structure. CONCLUSION: Iron may serve as a biomarker of venous vascular damage in multiple sclerosis. The backward iron accumulation pattern seen in the basal ganglia and thalamus of most MS patients is consistent with the hypothesis of venous hypertension. Haacke EM, Garbern J, Miao Y, Habib C, Liu M. Department of Radiology, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA2 Department of Radiology, the First Affiliated Hospital, Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China Source: Pubmed PMID: 20351671 (01/04/10)

The complete paper is at the MS-MRI site under papers and talks:
http://www.ms-mri.com/presentations.php

Will be interesting to see Zivadinov's research in print
cheer

[jozee]

The pieces of my personal puzzle are starting to fit. At age 17 I became ill with severe headache, vomiting, doublevision, lack of co-ordination, and facial paralysis. These are the symptoms of a Thalamus Stroke. I spent 3 months in hospital recovering. Learning to walk, speak and eye surgery to correct the double vision. I made a full recovery and didn't look back untill now. My MS diagnosis didn't happen until I was 26. Does this mean there was iron building up in my brain from a young age because of venous issues and did the iron cause multiple leisions on my brain and spine? I'm trying to make sense of what has happened to me.
I also think they are heading in the right direction. I'm excited about what's to come!!!

Jozee

[sbr487]

Does anyone know if there have been study or planned one that will try to correlate iron overload and the level of disability within MS patients ...

[Ruthless67]

This Thalamus idea is a most interesting topic to me. You see a couple of years back while reading the biography of Naomi Judd she wrote about, I believe it was an Aunt of hers, with MS. (If I’m wrong about just who it was, I’m sorry, it‘s been awhile since I read the book.) Anyway Naomi talked about how when she was a little child her Aunt was placed on the dining room table so she could interact in some ways with the family. The Aunt was, I believe, non ambulatory, incontinent and non auditory because of MS. It was not a particularly pleasant memory for Naomi.

Later when Naomi’s own health began to fail she went on quite a search to find answers because she obviously was going up against similar roadblocks even though she was an RN. She did a lot of research on the Thymus gland and later discovered it was Hepatitis C that she had.

It was her mention of the Thymus gland and my related web searches that produced a lot of useful information. Her personal search for more natural approaches and answers to her medical condition were what really prompted me to get going and find answers for my MS. I never could wrap my head around the idea that the drugs that compromise the immune system were any good for MS or a person‘s quality of life, and always felt there was more to the Auto-Immune theory. That the current treatments offered were not the answer to the disease and certainly not a cure. What I was searching for when I originally stumbled into the TIMS website in September of 2009, I can’t quite remember either, but I’m here and appreciating all the information.

This was all I came up with just now on a web search, and it’s a site to sell Thymus glandular, but it’s at least a conformation of what I remembered, lol.

Naomi Judd! The world-famous celebrity and country singer has recovered from her own battle with hepatitis C, in one of their website articles, describes Naomi's health regimen/protocol, "Perhaps one of the most significant therapies (for its effect on Naomi's Hepatitis C) was thymus glandular extract from calves... Naomi's liver enzyme levels, which had gone up again after the interferon cycle ended, dropped to within the normal range after she added the thymus glandulars to her program."


So here’s my uneducated question, are over/under active thymus glands and or the Thalamus talked about on this thread similar or the same topic? I’m just a layperson with MS looking for answers, so if they are two different areas of the body I don’t want to mix them up together and look anymore foolish. But if they are related, I almost feel like I've come full circle!

Thanks, Lora

[shye]

Ruthless 67-
No, the Thalamus and the thymus are totally different, with different functions.
The thalamus is near brain stem in brain, the thymus is under your sternum, high up, not so far from the thyroid.
The Thymus is a gland, the thalamus is a sort of nerve relay station.

[cms1233]

Is this why people with MS have a lot of trouble with sleep? My sleep is totally messed up with waking up many times throughout the night or waking up a few hours after going to sleep at night and being awake the rest of the night. I looked up thalamus and it says its function includes relaying sensation, special sense and motor signals to the cerebral cortex, along with the regulation of consciousness, sleep and alertness.

[NZer1]

This is a piece from Wikipedia about the thalamus
Function
The thalamus has multiple functions. It is generally believed to act as a relay between a variety of subcortical areas and the cerebral cortex. In particular, every sensory system (with the exception of the olfactory system) includes a thalamic nucleus that receives sensory signals and sends them to the associated primary cortical area. For the visual system, for example, inputs from the retina are sent to the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus, which in turn projects to the primary visual cortex (area V1) in the occipital lobe. The thalamus is believed to both process sensory information as well as relaying it—each of the primary sensory relay areas receives strong "back projections" from the cerebral cortex. Similarly the medial geniculate nucleus acts as a key auditory relay between the inferior colliculus of the midbrain and the primary auditory cortex, and the ventral posterior nucleus is a key somatosensory relay, which sends touch and proprioceptive information to the primary somatosensory cortex.

The thalamus also plays an important role in regulating states of sleep and wakefulness.[4] Thalamic nuclei have strong reciprocal connections with the cerebral cortex, forming thalamo-cortico-thalamic circuits that are believed to be involved with consciousness. The thalamus plays a major role in regulating arousal, the level of awareness, and activity. Damage to the thalamus can lead to permanent coma.

Many different functions are linked to various regions of the thalamus. This is the case for many of the sensory systems (except for the olfactory system), such as the auditory, somatic, visceral, gustatory and visual systems where localized lesions provoke specific sensory deficits. A major role of the thalamus is devoted to "motor" systems. This has been and continues to be a subject of interest for investigators. VIm, the relay of cerebellar afferences, is the target of stereotactians particularly for the improvement of tremor. The role of the thalamus in the more anterior pallidal and nigral territories in the basal ganglia system disturbances is recognized but still poorly understood. The contribution of the thalamus to vestibular or to tectal functions is almost ignored. The thalamus has been thought of as a "relay" that simply forwards signals to the cerebral cortex. Newer research suggests that thalamic function is more selective.[5]
AND
In humans, a common genetic variation in the promotor region of the serotonin transporter (the SERT-long and -short allele: 5-HTTLPR) has been shown to affect the development of several regions of the thalamus in adults. People who inherit two short alleles (SERT-ss) have more neurons and a larger volume in the pulvinar and possibly the limbic regions of the thalamus. Enlargement of the thalamus provides an anatomical basis for why people who inherit two SERT-ss alleles are more vulnerable to major depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and suicide.[14]
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If there is iron deposition issues in the thalamus it could easily be effecting/causing/influencing our most common MS symptoms. Hopfully the research can shed some light on this possibility.

[jozee]

NZer1,

Great info on the thalamus. Is there a vascular connection with the thalamus?

Jozee

[NZer1]

I had a look at the results from Google 'thalamus iron deposition' there is allot of published articles on this and there is also allot of info on blood supplies and returns. Many people have made comments on This is MS and Facebook CCSVI about what is being learnt in regard to iron and blood flows and what has been known for some time.

[NZer1]

Bumped for Cece, I think the hypothalamus in part of the picture also

[BooBear]

My last MRI (in February) indicated that there was no abnormality in the basal ganglia or thalamus. The two areas of increased FLAIR signal were in the anterior body/genu of the corpus callosum and left middle cerebullar pinnacle. All of my existing lesions (36 of them!) are in the petriventricular, subcortical and deep white matter.