Does MS cause CCSVI?

[gainsbourg]

...Blood flow to the inflamed nerves of the CNS is greatly improved, therefore easing MS symptoms

But I thought you said CCSVI doesn't cause those symptoms. So how could fixing it reduce them? Are you trying to confuse me?

Actually, I never said that CCSVI couldn't worsen MS symptoms but this is a good point. My argument may seem a bit confusing at first and I admit there are weaknesses that many have noted. Please remember, I'm only looking at this issue as a possibility, rather than wanting to jump on the "CCSVI causes MS" bandwagon without so much as a second look.

Yes, it could be a two way thing. Once healthy venous drainage is restored, oxygenated blood has better access to the sick nerves in the CNS, hypoxia is diminished, MS inflammation can then be reduced, proper nutrient deliver can resume etc. and although permanant damage can't be repaired, an awful lot of repair work could potentially take place over time.

On the other hand, what I am saying is that a diseased brain is bound to have compromised blood flow and that this is likely to bring out, or at least worsen any congenital venous defects (which we know are common in people anyway) because of the chronic strain it places over the blood flow in the brain, over a long period of time.

AS Richard Rudick says: "Even if there is an association (between MS and CCSVI) many suspect that venous abnormalities are likely to be part of the overall pathology of MS, rather than a cause of it. The brain of patients with MS is a diseased organ: you get all sorts of abnormalities there and it would be almost impossible to imagine that the venous physiology would be normal”. “There are well known syndromes of venous occlusion where you don't get the kind of self-perpetuating autoimmune responses you see in MS.”

I'm not saying CCSVI couldn't worsen MS symptoms (once the MS has brought out or worsened the inherent CCSVI) a vicious circle could be set up. What I'm saying is maybe MS is the factor that triggers this vicious circle. After all, roughly 22% of healthy people are supposed to also have CCSVI anyway, and very few of them go on to have MS.

If further research confirms that 22% of healthy people have CCSVI - yet only 0.001% of the world's population has MS - it means that most cases of CCSVI obviously have nothing to do with MS.

The disease might come first, the CCSVI might come first. Even vascular experts can't agree, so no one can know for sure whether it is the chicken or the egg. All I've I've tried to do is convey is the possibility that MS might come first.


gains

[1eye]

My reasoning is that people with MS, like everyone else have approximately a 22% chance of having or developing CCSVI in any case before you take into account the effect of the MS disease process. So these prior defects could include any of those in your list. The diseased MS brain then puts a chronic strain on the vasculature that exploits congenital venous defects much more seriously - resulting in a greatly increased incidence of CCSVI than in healthy people.
gainsbourg

Prof. Haacke is working on this now. Maybe he needs a bigger sample?

[MS_HOPE]

Hi Dr. Sclafani. I'm still having trouble understanding why your presentation in Belfast included as its first major point the assertion that MS is the most common cause of CCSVI.

I agree with you that it it has not been proven that CCSVI causes MS, but to me the converse has not been proven either. (There seems to be a strong association between the two, that much is certain.) I'm not a scientist, nor a health professional, but am reasonably familiar with both conditions.

I'm really trying to understand this, and mean no disrespect. Will you please explain why you made the statement: " ... ccsvi has many causes although ms was the most common cause"?

If you believe that MS causes CCSVI, can you share your lines of thought on this and how you came to this conclusion?

Many thanks for your continued presence here. I look forward to hearing your big news.

Thank you so much. i misquoted myself

i believe the most common association is with MS. There are many entiities that are associated with symptoms of ccsvi but you are absolutely correct that my statement is confusing.

I AGREE WE DO NOT KNOW WHETHER CCSVI CAUSES MS


and sorry for the confusion

So, Dr. Sclafani meant to say that the most common ASSOCIATION of CCSVI is with MS, not that it is a CAUSE of MS. Thanks for the clarification, Dr. S.

[concerned]

I AGREE WE DO NOT KNOW WHETHER CCSVI CAUSES MS

[CCSVIhusband]

I AGREE WE DO NOT KNOW WHETHER CCSVI CAUSES MS

We also don't know if the immune system is actually haywire or just doing what it's supposed to - in fact, we don't really know ANYTHING about MS ... but here take all these immunomodulating drugs, or this VERY risky chemotherapy ...

thanks:

(your friendly neurologists)

[concerned]

I AGREE WE DO NOT KNOW WHETHER CCSVI CAUSES MS

We also don't know if the immune system is actually haywire or just doing what it's supposed to - in fact, we don't really know ANYTHING about MS ... but here take all these immunomodulating drugs, or this VERY risky chemotherapy ...

thanks:

(your friendly neurologists)

I wasn't saying any of those things, I just wanted to make sure your efforts to kill this thread and spread your misinformative formulation of CCSVI+time=MS as a hard fact were in vain.

On the other hand, thanks a bunch for helping keep this thread near the top.


thanks:

(your friendly skeptic)

[gainsbourg]

Well I'm glad some of you agree that we still don't know what causes MS. I know it would be such a neat answer if CCSVI was the main cause - but how can it possibly be that simple, when a quarter of the entire population have CCSVI, but don't have MS? The more I think about it the crazier it seems!

According to the Buffalo survey, over 40% of people with non-MS neurological diseases have CCSVI, which is nearly double the frequency found in healthy people. Why double? That's a question we should be asking. What is the connection between these other illnesses and venous insufficiency? Not surprisingly people with other neuro diseases are becoming impatient to see if CCSVI treatment helps them too.

A Transverse Myelitis patient now appears to be have experienced life changing benifit from CCSVI treatment:

Immediately after my balloon angioplasty I felt a difference. The daily migraines that had tormented me for months stopped. I noticed a big difference in breathing. I never felt my breathing so good (not that I knew I had problem with it).
My improvements after the angioplasty have continued. My chronic fatigue faded away within weeks. My spasms practically disappeared two months afterwards. I stopped taking anti-spasm medications three months after the angioplasty. The pain I had in my left arm had decreased considerably.
I started to feel almost completely recovered.The good news, is that after treating CCSVI, many of the symptoms that tormented and that had me house-bound disappeared. I hope that this stays this way.

http://ccsvi.balconyblog.com/?p=224

I've also heard that Parkinson's and Alzheimer's patients, and their relatives, have started to enquire about liberation treatment.

So does CCSVI play a role in these other major neurological illness? If not, then why would CCSVI be twice as common in people with neurological illnesses as in healthy people? You can see why those people also want to try the treatment - but at the same time you can't help thinking that it is the diseased tissue and processes of these other illnesses bring on the vascular problems, rather than the other way round. Surely venous deficiency couldn't turn out to be the cause of Parkinson's, Alzheimer's,Transverse Myelitis and the like? (as people are claiming for MS)....it all sounds a bit too unlikely to be true.

So the mystery remains as to why CCSVI is twice as common in people with neurological illnesses as it is in healthy people.

Actually, I wouldn't mind betting that repairing vascular defects does improve things quite a bit for many of those with other neuro disorders, but could we then conclude that these diseases were all caused by those vascular problems? No.

Isn't CCSVI simply a common consequence of most neurological diseases that went previously unnoticed ? A condition that often occurs because disease puts a chronic strain on the vasculature? Saying that CCSVI is the definite cause of MS, or any or all of these neurological illness is a massive jump.


gainsbourg

[malden]

....

[gainsbourg]

Thanks Malden! That's odd because that's the second comment I've had about saying pump. Apparently I should have said "drain". The brain doesn't pump and the heart doesn't think...Try standing on your head it's hard to think...especially about the blood draining up to your heart.

[Cece]

but how can it possibly be that simple, when a quarter of the entire population have CCSVI, but don't have MS?

This is not a known fact.

[gainsbourg]

How do you define a known fact? I suppose all we can do is work with the latest statistics available. If they use deeper scans next time they might even find the figure is higher!

Of course Zamboni's first finding was that no healthy people had CCSVI. In fact Im sure I noticed the claim that healthy people do not have CCSVI is still on one of the sticky threads on this forum (I can't remember which one).

[Cece]

Zamboni's research, which found zero instances of CCSVI in controls in a blinded study, is the only one that has been peer-reviewed and published.

[Billmeik]

You have to remember that almost a quarter of non MS-rs have also been found to have CCSVI, so presumably a whole range of venous defects are common at birth in the population as a whole.

that's kust what buffalo found. Other control groups have been more in the 10-15% range.

[Billmeik]

You have to remember that almost a quarter of non MS-rs have also been found to have CCSVI, so presumably a whole range of venous defects are common at birth in the population as a whole.

that's kust what buffalo found. Other control groups have been more in the 10-15% range.

[gainsbourg]

The Alberta Health Services information sheet PDF about CCSVI (see link below) is a very interesting read. In my opinion it is way overcautious about CCSVI treatment, but it does make some very valid points about how we shouldn't assume CCSVI actually causes MS. Here's an excerpt:

How could MS actually cause CCSVI?
"If proven, the association between MS and CCSVI may actually be explained by MS causing CCSVI. The Inflammatory proteins related to MS travel through the major veins draining the brain and may cause the veins to simply show changes consistent with inflammatory cell contact. In the Buffalo study, a higher frequency of CCSVI was seen in MS patients with more severe disease; this is most consistent with MS causing CCSVI.

We know from many studies that signals within the brain attract inflammatory cells from the circulation. This causes these inflammatory cells to stick to the small blood vessels in the brain.

These cells do not get stuck in the vessels due to blocked flow; instead, they become attached to the vessels because molecules called “integrins” on the inflammatory cells exactly match molecules on the vessel wall (“integrin receptors”) like a key in a lock. Once bound to the vessel the inflammatory cells can then pass into the brain.

In fact, there is a very specific MS therapy (a drug called natalizumab/Tysabri) that blocks the ability of integrins to attach to the vessel wall. Blocking the attachment of inflammatory cells to the vesselwall almost completely stops inflammatory cells from crossing into the brain and is very effective
in stabilizing “relapsing-remitting” cases of MS. When this inflammatory process occurs however, proteins are released into the circulation and are carried away by the veins draining the brain.

Therefore, current knowledge of MS makes it more likely that constant drainage of inflammatory proteins through the major veins of the brain could cause the venous changes reported to occur frequently in MS.

If poor venous drainage from the brain were to cause MS, then people with blocked or absent jugular or vertebral veins should develop MS or an MS-like condition. There are many people with true venous insufficiency but they never get MS. In fact, neck surgeons commonly tie off one or both jugular veins during surgery to treat head and neck cancer; this has no medical consequence because the venous drainage of the head and brain is designed to have alternative routes of drainage."

http://www.albertahealthservices.ca/fea ... -sheet.pdf


gainsbourg