Your Health

MS Kills Connection > < Connection Kills MS

Posted: 5/23/2012

Meredith Vieira and her husband, Richard M. Cohen, who lives with MS: “You’re not in this alone.”

(NAPSI)—Multiple sclerosis (MS), a chronic, unpredictable disease of the central nervous system, is known for destroying connections, but making connections is helping to defeat this disease.

MS disrupts signals within the brain and between the brain and the rest of the body. This disruption results in symptoms ranging from reduced mobility, to numbness and tingling, to cognition issues and abnormal fatigue, to blindness and paralysis.

While MS kills connection, connection can also kill MS. That’s why the National MS Society created the “MS Kills Connection > < Connection Kills MS” campaign: to forge connections among people with MS, people who treat those with MS and people who search for answers to create a world free of MS.

Such connections have helped move MS in less than two decades from being an untreatable disease to one for which there are at least eight treatment options for those with relapsing MS, the most common form of the disease. And there are now even more new therapies speeding through the pipeline that offer hope to people with all forms of the disease.

This effort to connect those who want to stop MS, restore nerve function damaged by MS and end the disease for all time is already leading to distinct victories:

• The International MS Genetics Consortium has discovered new MS risk genes;

• An international nervous system repair and protection initiative has led to one of the first adult stem cell clinical trials;

• Cross-organizational collaboration is being fostered through the MS Coalition and the Emerging Therapies Collaborative;

• The first worldwide Society-sponsored research initiative to find effective ways of treating progressive MS is under way;

• New and creative platforms to bring together top scientists are advancing research in the link between vitamin D and MS, in pediatric MS, and in quality-of-life strategies to improve long-term disease management outcomes.

To help foster connections among all those currently affected by MS or who may be affected in the future, the Society has introduced a multichannel public education campaign stressing the theme: “MS Kills Connection > < Connection Kills MS.”

Meredith Vieira is featured in this campaign along with her husband, Richard M. Cohen, who has MS. “You’re not in this alone,” she said. “We’re all in this boat.” Cohen added, “I deny the certainty of possible outcomes. It really frees you up.” To connect and help stop MS from shutting people down, you can visit www.MSconnection.org.

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