New, Independent research from Serbia

September 12, 2011 at 9:10am

A new paper was recently published in Phlebology, Sept. 2011 issue.

Morphological and haemodynamic abnormalities in the jugular veins of patients with multiple sclerosis

D Radak, J Kolar, S Tanaskovic, D Sagic, Z Antonic, A Mitrasinovic, S Babic, D Nenezic and N Ilijevski Vascular Surgery Clinic, Dedinje Cardiovascular Institute, School of Medicine, Belgrade University, Heroja Milana Tepic ́a 1 Street, Belgrade, Serbia

(This study was not conducted by neurologists, nor was it funded with pharmaceutical monies.  These are vascular doctors --This study was partly funded by the Serbian Ministry of Science and Techonological Development – Project No. 41002.)

I have the full paper, and will break down what the researchers discovered.  

First, it is important to note that they only looked at the jugular veins with doppler.  No transcranial doppler, per the Zamboni criteria, and no venography or azygous.  These researchers wanted to see if they could find "morphological and haemodynamic abnormalities" in the jugular veins.  This means they were looking for physical irregularities and flow distubances in pwMS.  Not completely CCSVI, per Dr. Zamboni's definition.

The limitation of our study is that we did not examine the CCSVI prevalence in patients with MS because we did not investigate the intracranial and vertebral veins. The aim of our study was to evaluate morphological and haemodynamic IJV abnormalities in patients with MS and compare it with healthy controls. For morphological and haemodynamic abnormalities assessment of the IJVs, we used some of Zamboni’s criteria and two other parameters (parameters 1 and 2), which in our practice proved to be a good indicator of IJV flow disorder.

--What they were surprised to discover was that the IJV flow was very different in pwMS, and that they could pick this up with doppler ultrasound.

All these might result in IJV haemodynamics changes that could be assessed by non-invasive and cost-effective colour duplex sonography.6 The main finding of this study was to demonstrate a significantly higher prevalence of morphological and Doppler haemodynamics abnormalities in patients with MS in relation to healthy subjects.

Our study showed that 42% of the patients with MS had Doppler haemodynamic evidence of venous flow abnormalities as compared with 8.1% of the healthy controls. These data not only indicate that venous flow abnormalities were significantly associated with the presence of MS but also indicate that it can be seen in the population not suffering from MS, yet the difference remains statistically significant (P , 0.001).

--Also interesting was that they found faulty valves and stenosing lesions in some of the normal controls, but these irregularities didn't affect the blood flow as much as they did in pwMS.

Although no statistically significant differences in the frequency of stenosing lesion was observed between patients with MS and healthy controls, adding haemodynamic Doppler information in the IJV venous outflow was significantly different in 42% of MS patients showing flow abnormalities (27/64), as compared with 8.1% of the controls (3/ 37), P , 0.001.

Even with incomplete data, these researchers noted how venous malformations were affecting the blood flow in pwMS.  

I often restate Dr. Zamboni's most important quote to me, when I met him Bologna at his first worldwide conference in September, 2009.

"CCSVI is not about architecture, it is about the flow!"

Add this research paper to the independent, positive findings pile.  And let's hope other governments fund independent research like this, so that the pharmaceutical companies and their employees do not bury this important discovery in negative studies.

Joan