Statins may offer MS breakthrough

TESTS: Widely prescribed anticholesterol drugs are being tested to see whether they could slow down the progress of multiple sclerosis (MS).

Experts have launched a sixyear trial to see whether cheap statins are a viable treatment. It will involve 1,180 people with secondary progressive MS at almost 30 centres in the UK.

WIDELY PRESCRIBED anti-cholesterol drugs are being tested to see whether they could be used to help treat multiple sclerosis (MS).

Experts have launched an assessment to see whether cheap statins may become an MS treatment as well as lowering cholesterol.

The six-year trial will involve 1,180 people with secondary progressive MS at almost 30 centres across the UK, with the first participants starting medication later this year.

The £6m project will test simvastatin in people with the secondary progressive form of MS. People with this form of MS have limited options as there are currently no licensed treatments that can slow or stop disability progression.

MS affects more than 100,000 people in the UK.

The majority of people who are diagnosed with the condition are told they have relapsing MS and around half of those patients will develop secondary progressive MS within 15 to 20 years.

Lead researcher Dr Jeremy Chataway from University College London’s Institute of Neurology, who led an earlier study into the drug, said: “This drug holds incredible promise for the thousands of people living with secondary progressive MS in the UK, and around the world, who currently have few options for treatments that have an effect on disability.

“This study will establish definitively whether simvastatin is able to slow the rate of disability progression over a three-year period, and we are very hopeful it will.”

A small study involving 140 people with secondary progressive MS, which was published in

The Lancet in 2014, found those taking high doses of the drug had a significant reduction in the rate of brain shrinkage over two years and also had better disability scores at the end of the study.

Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of the MS Society, which is part-funding the trial, added: “This is a momentous step forward in our quest to find an effective treatment for progressive MS.

“More than 100,000 people in the UK are living with MS and this research will offer a huge amount of hope to the majority of them.”

MS is a condition of the central nervous system. People typically start experiencing symptoms in their 20s and 30s, which include fatigue, sight loss, incontinence and disability.

Secondary progressive MS patient Stuart Nixon added: “At the moment people like me are living with the prospect of our condition getting worse each day. This is the most exciting opportunity to change how we manage progressive MS.

“It would be amazing if this trial can show that an existing drug, costing just a few pence a day, can help with MS.”

The news comes after it was revealed that Exeter University scientists have discovered a potential cause for multiple sclerosis, in a major breakthrough that could pave the way for new treatments for the disease.

Scientists have found a new cellular mechanism which may cause the autoimmune disorder. Multiple sclerosis affects around 2.5 million people around the world.

It is more common in women than men. Although the cause has so far been a mystery, the disease causes the body’s own immune system to attack myelin – the fatty “sheaths” which protect nerves in the brain and spinal cord.

This leads to brain damage, a reduction in blood supply and oxygen and the formation of lesions in the body.

Life expectancy is on average five to 10 years lower.

This drug holds incredible promise for thousands of people.

Dr Jeremy Chataway from University College London.