Letter to Dr. Jock Murray-

March 12, 2010 at 1:55pm

I'm so glad to see that the endMS campaign is having a webcast on CCSVI in Canada-
http://mssociety.ca/en/research/ccsviWebcast.htm

I wrote to you in December of 2008 regarding CCSVI. Perhaps you remember?
Here is the letter I sent to you....

Dear Dr. Murray-

I am not a doctor, I am merely the loving wife of someone with MS. I have read many of your papers, and several chapters of your book on the history of MS. I am very thankful for your continued interest in MS, and your willingness to consider many factors in finding its cause. This is why I write to you today.

I would like to refer you to Dr. Paulo Zamboni's (University of Ferrara, Italy) ground-breaking work on venous insufficiency in MS. This study is the first to use doppler ultrasound to follow the blood circulation in the jugular and azygous veins in MS patients. All of the 65 MS patients studied had chronic venous reflux due to stenoses in their outflowing veins. None of the 230 controls had these stenoses. I believe the endMS campaign launching in Canada might benefit from trying to replicate Zamboni's findings.

Here is Dr. Zamboni's paper, published this month-

http://jnnp.bmj.com/cgi/rapidpdf/jnnp.2008.157164v1

Thank you for your consideration. I am hoping some of the Canadian endMS research money might be allocated to venous insufficiency. I wish you a blessed New Year. May 2009 be the year we endMS!

Joan Beal

News from Dr. Zamboni- CCSVI lesions classified as congenital

January 26, 2010 at 7:47am

Received an e-mail from Dr. Zamboni this morning-

A Consensus Conference on Venous Malformations - headed by Prof. Byung B Lee from Georgetown - and experts from 47 countries- studied the evidence and unanimously voted in favour of officially including the stenosing lesions found in CCSVI in the new Consensus document and Guidelines. Now published-

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20087280?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=1

http://www.minervamedica.it/en/journals/international-angiology/article.php?cod=R34Y2009N06A0434

This paper can be brought/linked to interventional radiologists and vascular surgeons. CCSVI lesions are classified as a truncular venous malformations - which means that vascular doctors have now classified this disease, CCSVI, as congenital- and preceding MS lesions.

Vascular doctors have agreed. CCSVI comes first.

Dr. Zamboni has been speaking to medical panels around the world. Yesterday was a "4 hour machine gunning of questions" by the Italian, Canadian and US MS Societies in Milan- Dr. Zamboni said he was able to answer all the questions with scientific evidence, and was quite pleased with the meeting's outcome. He'll be in North American soon. 

New research for 2010- linking "wedge-shaped" lesions to venous drainage

January 11, 2010 at 9:23am

Researchers in Australia and China note lesions that suggest impairment of venous drainage and link it to CCSVI-
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20056253?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=5

Wedge-shaped medullary lesions in multiple sclerosis.
Qiu W, Raven S, Wu JS, Carroll WM, Mastaglia FL, Kermode AG.

Centre for Neuromuscular and Neurological disorders, University of Western Australia, Australia;
Department of Neurology, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, Queen Elizabeth II Medical Centre, Perth, Western Australia, Australia;
Department of Neurology, the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a heterogeneous disease with variable clinical features and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings. We report four MS cases with unusual wedge-shaped lesions in the paramedian ventral medulla oblongata demonstrated on MRI. The clinical features and MRI characteristics of the medullary lesions suggest an impairment of venous drainage.

We propose that the formation of these wedge-shaped lesions may be related to the pattern of venous drainage in the ventral medulla and raised venous pressure due to chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency which has recently been described in MS. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.