I was 12 months from a wheelchair – but not a trace of MS remains
FOR sufferers of multiple sclerosis, there is often little hope. The incurable, degenerative condition affects the nerves, giving rise to a range of debilitating symptoms impacting everything from movement, speech and vision to mood.
Ultimately, patients are consigned to life in a wheelchair.
But today astonishing progress in combating some forms of the disease has been made thanks to stem cell therapy trials.
An international study, involving doctors in Sheffield, has used stem cell transplants to halt the progression of MS in some patients, and relieve the symptoms in others.
MS affects about 100,000 people in the UK. The immune system turns inward and attacks the nerves and their protective coating, causing inflammation and ultimately affecting the brain and the spinal cord. Until now, treatment has mainly involved drugs that help tame the immune system and minimise the worst symptoms, but they do not actually halt the disease itself.
The new stem cell treatment, known as AHSCT, is radically different. It involves harvesting the patients’ own blood and bone marrow stem cells before stripping the body’s immune system using a high dose of chemotherapy.
Then the stem cells are used to repopulate the bone marrow to produce new, healthy cells, which ‘reboots’ the immune system.
It means nerve cells no longer come under attack, preventing the condition from progressing. It cannot reverse damage already done and works best before the condition causes disability.
In the recent study, called MIST, 110 patients were split into two groups. Of the 55 patients who received the stem cell treatment, just six per cent had relapsed after three years. In contrast, of the 55 patients given standard MS drugs, 60 per cent suffered a relapse.
Professor John Snowden, director of blood and bone marrow transplantation at Sheffield’s Royal Hallamshire Hospitals, says: ‘We have to be cautious here and we cannot say yet that it’s a cure. But some patients have remained free of MS for many years. Whether it will ever come back, we don’t yet know.’
Prof Basil Sharrack, director of the MS Research Clinic at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, who led the UK branch of the trial, adds: ‘Not every patient with MS will benefit. This is for patients with very active disease who are not responding to standard therapy. It’s very aggressive but it does appear to be working, which is very exciting.’
Some patients with other related conditions, including systemic sclerosis – where the body’s immune system attacks healthy tissue – have also seen improvements to their condition following similar stem cell therapy.
AHSCT is now available on the NHS in England to those assessed as suitable: patients with relapsing remitting MS (which affects 85 per cent of sufferers), who have had the disease for less than a decade, who are not yet disabled and are under 45. They should also not be responding to standard treatment.
MRI scans need to show their disease is active, with several relapses in a 12-month period.
Among the patients to have benefited from stem cell therapy is Jodi Jackson, 42. She saw all traces of active MS disappear after paying £150,000 to have the treatment privately at the London Bridge Hospital, part of HCA Healthcare UK.
The mother of three, from Arkley, Hertfordshire, was diagnosed with MS in March last year and was told she would be in a wheelchair within 12 months.
But despite doctors advising her not to have AHSCT treatment because of the risks involved – as the immune system is stripped away, the body is highly vulnerable to infection – she was determined to pursue it for the sake of her young children, aged between 12 and eight.
Under the guidance of haematologist Dr Majid Kazmi, Jodi had stem cells removed from her blood and bone marrow before undergoing chemotherapy over six days. Her cells were then transplanted back into her blood.
‘It was very tough,’ she admits. ‘ I had hallucinations, nausea, burning pain and mouth ulcers throughout. I had to be kept in a sealed room with purified oxygen to prevent infection. But I’d do it all again in a second.’
After five months, Jodi was able to return to the gym for four days a week and plans to run the New York Marathon.
Her l atest MRI showed no active disease.
‘Most days I was having severe aches and pains, felt exhausted and had trouble walking,’ she says. ‘ Now the pain has more or less gone and I’ve got my energy back.
‘To have this extra time without disability while my kids are young is incredible.’