September 23, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias My Wife Says I Should Follow My Own (MS) Advice I have to be honest: I havenāt always been honest. I donāt always practice what I preach. My wife called me out on that as we watched an interview I did recently about multiple sclerosis on Montel Williams’ podcast. āYou should follow your own advice,ā she told me.
September 19, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias MS News That Caught My Eye Last Week: EBV, Stem Cell Transplant, NurOwn, Progression Without Relapse T-cells Targeting Epstein-Barr Virus at High Levels in MS Patients The evidence of a link between the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and multiple sclerosis (MS) continues to mount. The current thinking is that the immune responses that fight EBV may drive the attacks against the myelin nerve coating, which is…
September 16, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias An Interpretation of My MS Dreams: What Freud Might Say I studied psychology in college, but haven’t thought much about Sigmund Freud since then. I did the other night, though. I had a couple of puzzling dreams. Thinking about them after I woke up and putting a little of that college psychology to work, the puzzle became less puzzling. I…
September 12, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias MS News That Caught My Eye Last Week: Immunoadsorption, Off-label DMTs, Resistance Training, COVID-19 Vaccines Immunoadsorption Better Than 2nd Round of Steroids for MS Relapse This is an interesting study, particularly because of the physical problems that can be caused by significant steroid use over the years. Of course, immunoadsorption is essentially a blood transfusion; it involves collecting a patientās blood; separating out its…
September 9, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias Need Help Choosing the Right Medication to Treat Your MS? It’s not easy choosing a multiple sclerosis (MS) medication. There are shots and pills and intravenous infusions. The National Multiple Sclerosis Society lists more than 20 disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) on its website. Some, such as Lemtrada (alemtuzumab), Ocrevus (ocrelizumab), and Tysabri (natalizumab), have proven to…
September 2, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias Researchers Hit a Bump on the BTK Inhibitor Road A little over a year ago, I wrote about whether Bruton’s tyrosine kinase inhibitors (BTKi’s) might be the next big thing in multiple sclerosis (MS) treatments. BTKi’s are small molecules that selectively block an enzyme thatās important for the activation of B-cells in the immune system and…
August 29, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias MS News That Caught My Eye Last Week: Epstein-Barr, Aqua Exercise, Diagnosing SPMS, Myelin Repair Epstein-Barr Virus and MS Risk: New Link to Mono Found in Study Add this study to the mounting evidence that there’s some type of association between the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) ā the virus associated with mononucleosis ā and multiple sclerosis. I’ve never had mono, but several people with…
August 26, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias Do You Cry and Don’t Know Why? It Might Be PBA I often see posts on social media from people with multiple sclerosis asking if crying for no reason is an MS symptom. It can be. Laughing for no reason can be, too. Both can be severe, persistent, unremitting, and unpredictable. The medical name for this is…
August 22, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias MS News That Caught My Eye Last Week: PBA, Pregnancy, Interferon-beta, Pediatric MS Test Early Detection of Pseudobulbar Affect May Help Ease MS Symptom I often see posts on social media from people with MS asking if crying for no reason is an MS symptom, because it happens to them. I didn’t know that apparently, it is. Laughing, too. This report says…
August 19, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias Morse Code Keeps My MS Mind in Gear I speak Morse code. It’s my second language, and I’m fluent. I’ve been speaking Morse code since I got my ham radio license nearly 63 years ago. (My call letters are KR3E.) At first, I received what was sent at a very slow speed of five words per minute,…
August 15, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias MS News That Caught My Eye Last Week: COVID-19 Vaccines, Robot Training, Bladder Treatment, Tysabri Anti-CD20 Therapies Help Mount T-cell Response to COVID-19 Vaccines Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been concerns that anti-CD20 therapies, such as Ocrevus (ocrelizumab), may interfere with the ability of a person with MS to fight a COVID-19 infection. But this report says that even if…
August 12, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias Dr. Amazon Will See You Now: Online Retail Giant to Acquire Healthcare Services Company Are you ready to buy your healthcare services from the same place you can buy almost everything else under the sun? Amazon hopes you are. Last month, the giant of online sales announced plans to acquire One Medical, a company that operates more than 125 medical offices across…
August 8, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias MS News That Caught My Eye Last Week: Stem Cell Transplant, Tysabri, Exercise, Zinc Stem Cell Transplant Found to Reduce MS Relapses, Ease Disability This is excellent news for those of us who would like to see stem cell transplant for MS become more available and affordable. These researchers analyzed 50 studies covering a total of 4,831 people with MS, ages 26 to…
August 5, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias New Service Takes a Shark-size Bite out of Medication Costs My multiple sclerosis medications cost me a lot, even with good insurance. Yours probably do, too, if you don’t live in a country where the government picks up your drug costs. But now billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban is taking a big bite out of the cost of some…
August 1, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias MS News That Caught My Eye Last Week: Vitamin D, Brain Health, Digoxin, Natalizumab No Link Between MS Severity, Vitamin D-related Mutations: Study Several studies over the years have indicated that there could be a link between a person’s vitamin D level and the risk of multiple sclerosis (MS). This study is slightly different. Researchers looked at whether genetic variations related to vitamin…
July 29, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias Dreams, Diagnoses, and Disclosures: When to Tell Others About MS The other night I dreamed I was standing in a military formation when my leg began to twitch with an MS spasm. I couldn’t stay in line. The top sergeant yelled while the other soldiers laughed. Suddenly, the scene shifted to a balance beam, where I desperately tried to…
July 25, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias MS News That Caught My Eye Last Week: Intermittent Fasting, Roe v. Wade, IRLs Intermittent Fasting in MS Leads to Immune Cell, Metabolic Changes Although the National MS Society will tell you there is no such thing as an “MS diet,” many people follow various diets that seem to help them. One that’s been around for several years is intermittent fasting. In…
July 22, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias Can MS, Medical Marijuana, and Guns Safely Coexist? It seems to me from my anecdotal observations that a fair number of people living with multiple sclerosis (MS) have a gun. When I wrote about the issue a few years ago, I discovered that more people than I expected had both a gun and MS. Additionally, many…
July 18, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias MS News That Caught My Eye Last Week: ATA188 in Progressive MS, Early Symptoms, Yoga, Rituximab EMBOLD Study of ATA188 in Progressive MS Is Given Go-ahead Is this another small step toward an MS cure? AT188 is an experimental therapy designed to kill cells infected with the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). As you probably know, researchers have found a lot of evidence that EBV is connected…
July 15, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias How to Avoid Trouble While Traveling Internationally With MS Medications The case of Women’s National Basketball Association star Brittney Griner is an important reminder for all of us who travel internationally with our medications: What you might be able to do in your home country, might not be the case in another. And the penalty could be severe. Griner was…
July 11, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias MS News That Caught My Eye Last Week: COVID-19, Predicting Progression, Early Treatment, Estriol Higher COVID-19 Risk Tied to 2 MS Therapies, Even With Vaccination According to this study, people being treated with Ocrevus had 3.6 times the risk of a breakthrough COVID-19 infection compared with people being treated with most other disease-modifying therapies. For those treated with Gilenya, the risk was increased…
July 8, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias Trial Results a Setback for US Approval of Nabiximols for MS Spasticity This news seems disappointing: A Phase 3 clinical trial of nabiximols ā which is available under the brand name Sativex in several countries, including Canada and most of Europe ā has failed to meet its primary goal of reducing leg spasticity in people with multiple sclerosis (MS). Nabiximols…
July 1, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias A New Gift Helps Me Stay Cool in the Summer Heat OK, I know I look silly wearing this ā maybe even scary ā but the Father’s Day gift I received from my son and his family is really cool, especially for someone with multiple sclerosis. Just in time for the hot days of summer, I now have a…
June 27, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias MS News That Caught My Eye Last Week: aHSCT, NICE Guidelines, ED, Neural Sleeve aHSCT, Stem Cell Therapy for RRMS, Troubled by Unknowns, Paper Says This research team says more studies are needed before aHSCT should be used for people with MS. But this has been the standard response for years to those who have seen benefits with stem cell transplants. Yet there…
June 24, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias Why I’m Giving 3 MS Medications Another Try Over the many years I’ve lived with multiple sclerosis (MS), I’ve used several medications to treat my MS symptoms. Some have helped, some haven’t, and some worked at first but then lost their efficacy. I recently returned to three of them that I’d stopped using for various reasons.
June 20, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias MS News That Caught My Eye Last Week: Vidofludimus Calcium, Foralumab, Exoskeleton, Dysport Vidofludimus Calcium Safely Reduced RRMS Brain Lesions Vidofludimus calcium, also called IMU-838, is an oral therapy designed to reduce the activity of B- and T-cells. These are immune cells believed to be responsible for the inflammation that results in MS damage. In this small study, active lesions ā including…
June 17, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias She Disclosed Her Illness and Got the Job It’s a decision most of us with a chronic illness have to make sooner or later: When do we disclose our illness, and to whom, and how do we do it? Thirty-one-year-old Katie Coleman faced that decision not long ago. Coleman has stage 4 kidney cancer, and, in April, she…
June 13, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias MS News That Caught My Eye Last Week: Evusheld, Immunotherapy, Blood Test, Aubagio Evusheld Boosts Antibodies Against COVID-19 in Vaccinated Patients Research has shown that the COVID-19 vaccines have been effective for people being treated with disease-modifying therapies, except for those that target B-cells, such as Ocrevus (ocrelizumab), Kesimpta (ofatumumab), and Rituxan (rituximab). If this very small study of 18 people proves…
June 10, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias Does Medical Marijuana Help the Pain That Comes With MS? Will your doctor approve you to buy medical marijuana (MMJ)? Two of mine will and one won’t. The doctor who won’t, a primary care physician who works within a medical group, told me it’s the group’s policy. The problem, she explained, is that there are no guidelines. How do you…
June 6, 2022 Columns by Ed Tobias MS News That Caught My Eye Last Week: Ublituximab, Lyvispah, Diet Study FDA Decision on Ublituximab for Relapsing MS Pushed to Yearās End Ublituximab is similar to Ocrevus (ocrelizumab) and Kesimpta (ofatumumab), which also target B-cells, the immune cells that play a role in the inflammatory attacks that harm the central nervous system of people with MS. Each of…