I've seen this information in an article about MS from med page as a small follow-up to the abstract that Gracie bookmarked about a month ago mentioning the anti-AQP4 monoclonal antibody as a treatment for NMO, the three paragraphs below are the relevant ones about NMO from the article with a link to the article below it. Bumby/Jim

But there is a small component of demyelinating disease called neuromyelitis optica, where the immune target may be much more restricted to a single molecule. And in this case, it's the water channel known as aquaporin 4. And that discovery was made by Vanda Lennon and her coworkers at the Mayo Clinic.
So recently Jeff Bennett at the University of Colorado and Alan Verkman at the University of California San Francisco have made an antibody to aquaporin 4. But the antibody has been disarmed so that it cannot cause immunological damage to the water pore. So the strategy is to use that monoclonal antibody as a decoy.
So this is a very exciting approach that we hope can be taken forward into humans with neuromyelitis optica [NMO] and provide the first proof that an antigen-specific therapy will work.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/clinical-context/MultipleSclerosis/31923

This is going to sound bad, but I'm so glad that other people know what I'm talking about when it comes to itching.  I thought I was going nuts!  I'll bring it up to my neuro the next time I see him. I itch CONSTANTLY and it doesn't matter where I itch.  It's all over - even my tongue itches.





Take care,
Michelle M.  :)








-----Original Message-----


From: makajohnson [email address removed]

To: devics-spectrum [email address removed]

Sent: Thu, Mar 29, 2012 11:23 pm


Subject: Re: [Devics-spectrum] Itching????





Yes, ITCHING, ITCHING, ITCHING!!!!  I've had this since 2004.  Sometimes it has

just been a mild itch someplace, like on my scalp or eyebrow area.  But I have

itching always, and sometimes it is almost unbearable like right now all over my

back and one side of my hip. 

 You've gotten some good suggestions from people already, but here are some

things that help me somewhat: 1800 mg. of Gabapentin per day, sometimes Xanax at

bedtime when it is really bad, no tight clothing rubbing against me, rubbing the

itching areas with a cold wet washcloth, and using itch controlling lotions such

as Sarna or Eucerin Itch Relief (this lotion thing is actually more a

psychological help since our itches aren't skin related, but are nerve related.)

And remember, our symptoms do change-and sometimes for the better!  Kathi


 

This paper offers up a test that may help distinguish MS from NMO, I know that some NMO patients have been mistakenly misdiagnosed with MS, if the test proves to be accurate it could especially help out when patients are NMO IgG negative. Below are a few paragraphs from the article which I think are the relevant ones as well and a link to the article. Bumby/Jim

In a recent paper published by Journal of the Neurological Sciences, a team led by Feng also looked at how the biomarker can help distinguish between MS and a similar disease called neuromyelitis optica, or NMO. Patients with NMO display a sort of false MS, with many of the clinical characteristics of multiple sclerosis. But the disease is caused by a different underlying issue (closer to what’s seen in lupus rather than MS) that can actually be worsened instead of helped by interferon treatment. Thus, for these patients, a correct and precise diagnosis is doubly important.
Fortunately, Feng and her colleagues found that their assay for serine-phosphorylated STAT1 (P-S-STAT1) could distinguish between the two diseases in a study using previously diagnosed patients. When stimulated with beta-interferon, the samples from NMO and lupus patients showed a larger P-S-STAT1 response compared to the response seen in samples from MS patients. With additional information from expression levels of STAT1’s genetic targets, making up an “interferon signature” for the diseases, the researchers could accurately sort the patients to their appropriate diagnosis.
“The interferon signatures were important in differentiating among these three diseases,” Feng said. “We identified MS as the only time those signatures are lower. In NMO, it’s higher. NMO is actually more active like lupus, not MS. That can help us to understand why this disease occurs, and why, unlike MS, interferon is not a therapy for NMO.”
http://sciencelife.uchospitals.edu/2012/03/22/bringing-focus-to-a-blurry-diagnosis/

Hello everyone,





I am changing my email address to:   [email address removed]  I'll keep the AOL address for a little while longer, but I'm trying to move all my email communication to my Charter address.




Thanks so much!
Michelle :)