MS Meds

[surth]

I just want to know does a person have to be on MS Meds cos im not ifi get a attack i go on a cortozone drip for 3 days. And is MS inherrited?

[Willowwoman777]

I have 3 friends who are not on dmd's. The one has been on everything under the sun and just had a major allergic reaction to copaxone about a month ago after being on it for 15 years. She told me she is not going to use another dmd for quite a while. She told me she actually feels better. The other 2 use diet, and natural supplementation to combat it. Does it work? I don't know. Although MS is a desease, we each have to figure out what we are personally comfortable with doing as far as treatments, etc. We can toss various treatments around and one person may swear by it, while another says, "no way will I try it". It is an individual desease with no set pattern. I am using copaxone (sometimes) and was using it consistantly and still had an exacerbation. I've only backed off since I realized it was causing major insomnia. I'm not giving up on it, yet.

[Sumanadevii]

One thing they fail to address in that study my friend is quality of life.  Without steroid treatments, I don't even want to guess where I would be.  I can tell you, I couldn't hold my head up or care for myself.  I guess I would take steroids along with the risks to have some kind of life.

[rendean]

I believe daisy.girl has provided us with the correct passage from the quoted site.  She is correct in that steroids are merely palliative and do NOTHING to prevent disease progression. They shorten the amount of time one has the symptoms.

For instance, with someone with optic neuritis. The steroids help shorten the time one experiences the pain and vision limitations. Eventually, even WITHOUT the steroids, one would still be left with the same residual side effects with or not the steroids were used.

DMDs are used to SLOW the progression of the disease but at this time the ones available to us for use average only about a 30% success rate at slowing/stopping the progression. I believe there have been studies that even without total success (stopping progression) that there are documented studies to prove that it does increase the time one is functional and able to perform their normal activities, even with help. I'll return with documentation to support this last statement and ascertain if my understanding was correct.

Ren

[daisy.girl]

This site:
http://www.mult-sclerosis.org/steroidtreatments.html

states the following about Steroids for MS Relapses:

While glucocorticoids are certainly effective at reducing the immediate impact of relapses, they have been found to have no effect at all on the overall progress of the disease. I would like to reiterate this: steroid use does nothing at all to delay the progression of multiple sclerosis. Seen this way their use is merely palliative much as taking an aspirin to treat a headache reduces the pain but does nothing to address the cause. This would be fine if steroids didn't have such significant side-effects.

[COBOB]

Actually, steroids might be able to hold off the attacks, if we could take them long term.  The side effects would be worse than the MS,  That's really the issue.  Both corticosteroids and DMDs are immunomodulators.  DMDs seem to be better tolerated for long term use.  Copaxone and Steroids also seem to have an anti-inflammatory effect.

As far as the original question, no one has to go on IVSM, but it reduces the damage and can stop an attack.  DMDs are taken to prevent the attack.  It's that old thing about an ounce of prevention being worth more than ....

Bob

[Lulu54]

Right, Bob.  It does stop the assault but it has a different role in treating our MS than the DMD's; it appears we are discussing this with different semantics but on the page. If only it were so simple that prednisone could keep us free from attack, we would all be on regular therapy all the time.  DMDs and the steroids both serve a different function in treating our MS - I'm glad both are available.

Surth - sorry that your thread has been highjacked with all these other discussions.  We sometimes get off track with comments here and there.  I hope you have found your answer in all of this chat.  If not, please let us know and we'll try to keep it to the point.

be well, Lu