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Sunday, October 15, 2006
CAMPATH: "It very well shut down their disease. The reduction in relapses was amazing"
"....Jose Mezquita, 32, awoke one morning, and had difficulty walking. "It started last August. I had numbness in the legs, and basically that was about it at the time,” he said. Mezquita was diagnosed with MS. The available treatment options, he discovered, could only slow its progression. That's when he heard about a clinical trial using a drug called Campath. Dr. Brian Steingo, a neurologist and one of the investigators, says in preliminary studies, Campath has shown promise. "It very well shut down their disease. The reduction in relapses was amazing, so I am very excited about it,” said Dr. Steingo. In multiple sclerosis, some of the body's own white blood cells behave abnormally, and attack the fatty sheath around nerves in the brain and spinal cord. Campath is made up of antibodies designed to help the immune system remove those white blood cells. "The idea of the antibody is to essentially wipe out the white blood cell to significantly repair its function,” said Dr. Steingo. ....Campath is already approved by the FDA to treat a certain form of leukemia, but the focus of this trial is to see if it can slow multiple sclerosis, or better yet, stop it in its tracks. |