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American Morning
Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month Sheds Light on Crippling Disease
Aired May 03, 2001 - 11:29 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Whether or not you knew it, this is multiple sclerosis awareness month. This disease is in the spotlight even more these days, thanks to the popular NBC series "The West Wing." Martin Sheen plays the president of the U.S. on the show, and his character suffers from MS.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE WEST WING")
MARTIN SHEEN, ACTOR: The New Hampshire primary isn't held in New Hampshire any more?
RICHARD SCHIFF, ACTOR: You can't win the New Hampshire primary.
SHEEN: I'm going to win the New Hampshire primary.
SCHIFF: Which is why you can't win it.
ROB LOWE, ACTOR: You're incredibly popular in this state; you're a Democrat who was elected with 69 percent of the vote. That's unheard of.
SCHIFF: There's no way you can exceed expectations; all you can hope for is an "as expected."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: This program has brought a very visible and credible awareness to multiple sclerosis and it provides a strong platform to educate Americans about advances in MS treatment.
Joining us from Washington to talk more about the disease and the battle against it is doctor John Richert. He's from Georgetown University Medical Center.
Doctor, thank you much for coming in and talking to us about this today. I was surprised to learn, as I read through the research on that in preparing for this interview this morning, that MS strikes -- or this kind of disease strikes women more than men. Why is that?
DR. JOHN RICHERT, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER: Nobody knows for certain. Certainly it affects women about twice as often as it affects men. That's true for autoimmune diseases in general, and MS is one of the diseases that we think are autoimmune in the sense that the immune system attacks body zone tissues. In this case, the nervous system. And that ratio of overrepresentation in women is common in those diseases in general.
HARRIS: And so, for those of us who really have not had much contact with people who may be suffering from this, give us an idea of exactly how the onset of this comes on.
RICHERT: Well, this is a disease of the central nervous system, the brain and spinal cord. And so the symptoms that may occur are protean and myriad and may affect almost any part of the central nervous system, so that people may have various degrees of paralysis, loss of sensation, difficulty with vision, trouble with balance, coordination, bowel and bladder dysfunction, cognitive dysfunction. Any of those things may occur relatively randomly.
HARRIS: is it fairly easy nowadays to live a normal life carrying this disease with you?
RICHERT: Well, it varies. There are some people who are fortunate enough to have a relatively mild form of the disease, but most people are quite significantly affected by it, and a great deal of disability is very common. Fortunately, we have new drugs now that help us alter the course of the disease, but it's still a very disabling disease.
HARRIS: Now, you bring up the drugs; I want to ask you about that. I saw something about the ABC drugs -- what is that?
RICHERT: Right. Well, we now have four drugs that are approved by the FDA for use in treating MS, and the first three have been around for seven or eight years now, and they're the ones called the ABC drugs: Avonex, Betaseron and Copaxone.
In the last six months, now, we have a fourth drug, Novantrone, that's been approved by the FDA. And, by and large, that is a drug that is used predominantly when people with MS continue to get worse despite being on one of the ABC drugs.
HARRIS: All right. Well, let me ask you -- as the drugs, I guess, continue to be developed the research right now -- is it aimed at just making sure that people can actually maintain a normal life with this disease, or is the research now going towards trying to eradicate it?
RICHERT: Well, just about every angle you can think of is being attacked, certainly, to try to prevent early symptoms, to try to prevent the progression of the disease, and certainly the drugs that we have available now are quite good at preventing progression of the disease. There are also research efforts aimed at trying to reverse the disease process. The damage that's caused by the inflammation in the nervous system leads to loss of an insulation-like material called myelin and there are also efforts aimed at trying to learn how to remyelinate the nervous system.
HARRIS: All right; Dr. John Richert of Georgetown University Medical Center, thanks much for the primer this morning. Good luck to you down the road.
RICHERT: Thanks very much.
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