February 18 - Multiple sclerosis can leave its victims unable to move and in constant pain. It's an autoimmune disease that wrecks havoc on the central nervous system. In some cases, no treatment works. Now, a new therapy stops the disease's progression and gets patients out of bed and back on their feet.

On her 40th birthday, Andra Litman was taken down a path unthinkable. "Unless you're in this body, I don't know how you can begin to imagine," she says.

Doctors diagnosed this artist, attorney, and mother of two with multiple sclerosis, a disease that left her unable to even turn over in bed. Then she started a new treatment. She was out of a wheelchair and on her feet in one month.

Neurologist Olaf Stuve, M.D., Ph.D., says the cancer drug rituximab (Rituxan) is the first treatment to target the B cells in patients with MS, and it could be the first effective treatment for patients when nothing else works.

"The response to the Rituxan in those patients were really dramatic, in terms of not only stopping disease progression, but really helping the patient to recover some of the neurological function," Dr. Stuve, of UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, tells Ivanhoe.

Instead of a daily or weekly injection, rituximab requires two infusions every six months. White spots, or lesions on a patient's brain before treatment, are hallmarks of MS. After treatment, they are gone.

Dr. Stuve says, "I think it will be a very effective therapy and probably more effective than what we have available at this time."

Litman says, "The first thought every morning when I woke up for four years was, 'Is it a shot night?'" Now, she can tune her thoughts to what matters most.

Since rituximab only targets one aspect of the immune system, it poses fewer side effects than standard treatments. Dr. Stuve is just beginning a study on using rituximab to treat primary-progressive MS (PPMS), a specific form that affects 10 percent of patients and for which there are no effective treatments.

If you would like more information, please contact:

Aline McKenzie
Office of News and Communications
UT Southwestern Medical Center
5323 Harry Hines Blvd.
Dallas, TX 75390-9060
(214) 648-3404
aline.mckenzie@utsouthwestern.edu
http://www.utsouthwestern.edu

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