In multiple sclerosis, walking autonomy is lost on average 18 years after the first symptoms. Hence the importance of having medicines from the start. This is one of the indications for this new product by the Roche laboratory, which has just been approved by the European Commission.
Dominique Farrugia is a courageous man, who has decided to make public his fight against multiple sclerosis … He describes an “exhausting” disease that makes you spend your life with a sword of Damocles over your head . Dominique must always be congratulated, because thanks to him this capricious, debilitating and still a little mysterious disease has emerged from his taboo anonymity.
It appears between 20 and 40 years old, but for some years now we have been living in the hope of effective drugs, which was not the case in the past. This seems to be the case with this new drug, Ocrevus, approved by the European Medicines Commission and intended for the early stages of the disease and its progressive outbreaks.
Unexplained electrical failure
As neurologists say, specialists in this disease can be compared to a very particular power failure. The nerve impulse is conveyed by a whole series of electric wires – the nerves – which, starting from the spinal cord, which one could liken to an enormous cable, go to all the parts of our body to give orders to our muscles. You follow me ?
An electric wire is always protected by a sheath; The same goes for nerve fibers. This sheath is called myelin. And it is she who is at the origin of this disease: when it is damaged, just like in an electrical circuit, the messages conveyed by the nerve are slowed down, lose their intensity and the order they were supposed to. bringing it to the nerve cell happens in an anarchic fashion.
As it can affect any nerve, therefore any muscle, the symptoms are unpredictable and a headache for the doctor. Vision disturbances, balance, pain, paralysis, wherever the nerves act, everywhere multiple sclerosis can strike. In fact it’s sadly simple… when the neurologist doesn’t find any logic in the symptoms, he thinks of this disease. He does tests, especially MRI, which confirms
Multiple sclerosis is now thought to be an autoimmune disease. That is to say that the organism – the nervous matter in this case – self-destructs can be helped by a virus. But this is only a hypothesis
Multiple sclerosis affects 70,000 people in France. Two million in the world. Two women for one man! An originality, without us really knowing why. It is a disease of progressive onset and capricious evolution. That is to say by irregular pushes.
Very active research.
It is the most active field of neurology. And the good news follows one another, at a rate that cannot be found anywhere else in this specialty. New drugs have been available in France for a few years, rather reserved for the prevention of relapses, with, we must be honest, a risk of potentially serious side effects. So we reserve them for the most severe cases. But, with the recent arrivals of first-line drugs, that is to say from the time of diagnosis, it is a considerable step in the fight against this disease which sets in for years.
And then we have to talk about physiotherapists. In multiple sclerosis, they are the ones that occur most often and for the longest time. Because, we must be aware that multiple sclerosis is the 2e cause of handicap in young adults, just after road accidents. A slow but constant evolution. It is estimated that walking autonomy is lost on average 18 years after the first symptoms.
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