Source MS Society:

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has licensed cladribine (also known as Mavenclad) to treat people with highly active relapsing MS.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) will now decide whether to make it available on the NHS in England and Wales. The Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) will decide for Scotland.

How does it work?  Cladribine is currently used as an anti-cancer drug. In MS, the body’s own immune cells mistakenly attack the myelin that protects nerve cell fibres. Cladribine works by reducing the number of immune cells in the body, which should reduce the damage to myelin.

Cladribine is taken as two courses of tablets, one year apart.  Read on.

Source MS Trust:

The development of new drugs is a long and difficult process. Fewer than one or two compounds in 10,000 tested actually make it through to being licensed treatments with many being rejected on safety, efficacy or quality grounds. On average it will take 10-15 years for a new compound to get from the test-tube into the medicine cabinet. It is important to remember that not all the treatments currently being developed or tested will receive a license or be approved for use in the NHS.  Read on.

Source Independent:

Ministers have spent almost £40m in an “appalling” attempt to stop sick and disabled people receiving the financial help they are entitled to, The Independent can reveal.

Freedom of Information requests have exposed how taxpayers’ money has been spent on futile legal battles to prevent vulnerable people receiving help.

The hit to the public purse could also be far higher than the new data suggests because it is still unclear how much more the state spends running courts where sanctions are challenged.   Read on.

Source Multiple Sclerosis News Today:

A substance that the pancreas secretes can promote the regeneration of the protective nerve-cell coating that is damaged in multiple sclerosis, a mouse study shows.

The substance is fibroblast growth factor 21, or FGF21. It promotes remyelination, the renewal of the myelin sheath protecting the central nervous system, according to the study.

Researchers said the results indicate that scientists may be able to develop a therapy around FGF21 to treat diseases characterized by loss of myelin, including MS.

The study, “Peripherally derived FGF21 promotes remyelination in the central nervous system,” was published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Loss of myelin underlies several neurological diseases. The damage can be repaired with remyelination unless it has reached a certain point, however.

In normal development, what scientists call oligodendrocyte precursor cells become oligodendrocytes, whose major function is generating myelin. When a nervous system injury leads to the depletion of myelin, the precursor cells start to proliferate, the first step in remyelination.

Source  Caroline Wyatt, The Telegraph:

I lay face down on a pedestrian crossing, knees bleeding where they’d hit the road.  I couldn’t get back on my feet, even as the lights changed. It was May 2016 and I’d been on my way to meet friends when  I fell without warning. The next day I woke too wobbly to walk, with double vision that took weeks to resolve.

I decided then that I had to do something drastic to halt the progress of my multiple sclerosis (MS), the disease I’d been diagnosed with a few months earlier. My latest drug treatment was clearly not working. I was approaching my 50th birthday increasingly unable to balance, concentrate or speak, or even listen to  music or watch TV – the images  made me nauseous, while the emotional lability that often comes with MS meant that music made me weep.

I’d had symptoms since 1992. For years I tried to ignore the fatigue and brain fog. Sometimes I’d feel better, and wonder if I’d been imagining it. In 2002 I was told I had clinically isolated syndrome (CIS), after a brain scan showed a single brain lesion (an area of damaged tissue) had formed when the myelin sheath – which protects nerves – came under attack. I was warned CIS can be a precursor to MS.

I didn’t want it to affect my job as a BBC correspondent covering religious affairs. But in 2015 I went numb down one side of my body for several weeks. A scan showed multiple lesions, and a specialist confirmed I had relapsing-remitting MS. It felt like a life sentence. My family wasn’t surprised – we’d long known it was a possibility. No tears were shed; my parents are of the stiff-upper-lip generation. Read on.

Source MS Trust:

The European Commission (EC) has granted marketing authorization for cladribine (Mavenclad)for the treatment of adults with highly active relapsing multiple sclerosis. This follows a recommendation from the European Medicines Agency in June that a licence should be granted.

Cladribine will now need to be appraised by NICE and the SMC to determine NHS availability in the UK. NICE has started the process and the MS Trust is contributing to the appraisal. A decision from NICE is expected to be published in February 2018, with the drug potentially available on the NHS in England and Wales three months later.  Read on.