We met some of the brilliant women from the BartsMS research group at Queen Mary University London. Dr Sharmilee Gnanapavan is a neurologist who specialises in finding new ways of identifying MS progression.
It takes a long time and lots of hard work to develop a new MS treatment. In 2019, ocrelizumab (brand name Ocrevus) became the first drug to be available for people with primary progressive MS on the NHS.
To help people at every stage of MS, we need to stop MS from progressing. Researchers are looking at three ways to do this. And we’ve now reached the point where there are clinical trials in progress for all three.
This year, many MS researchers have found themselves working from home. But that doesn’t mean they’re working alone. The world’s two biggest MS research conferences have joined forces to go virtual, giving researchers like Dr Veronique Miron from the University of Edinburgh the vital opportunity to share their results and collaborate.
We know around half of all people with MS experience problems with cognitive processes. Researchers are working hard to understand more about how we can help people to manage cognitive symptoms of MS.
You may have seen the suggestion that a vaccination for a common virus could stop MS. We look behind the headlines to see what the original research actually said. A recent paper suggests that MS could be caused by threadworms and Epstein-Barr virus – two common infections. But researchers didn’t present any new evidence and are just proposing it as an idea.