Canadians driven to find cure of multiple sclerosis
Article by Rowenzrw
Multiple sclerosis (MS) was in the spotlight Thursday in Canada when A&W, a national hamburger restaurant chain, staged its third annual Cruisin’ for a Cause fundraiser to help find a cure for the debilitating disease.
Set against a backdrop of vintage vehicles that gathered at the more than 730 A&W outlets right across Canada, the chain aims to raise 1 million Canadian dollars (1.01 million U.S. dollars) for the cause through fundraisers held over the past month. In the first two years, a combined 1.1 million Canadian dollars (1.11 million U.S. dollars) was raised.
About 50,000 to 75,000 Canadians are diagnosed with MS, one of the highest rates per capita in the world. But little is known about what causes the neurodegenerative disease, which affects the brain and the spinal cord and can lead to blindness and paralysis at its most extreme.
According to a survey taken between 2004 and 2005, the 2008 Atlas of Multiple Sclerosis showed Canada, with a population of about 35 million, had 133 MS sufferers for every 100,000 people. Only the United States, Germany, Norway and Hungary had higher rates of the disease.
Research by the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, however, puts the number as high as 240 people per 100,000, with the disease increasingly striking younger people, usually between 20 and 40 years old. It is also affecting three times more women than men.
Asked why the disease is affecting younger people, Yves Savoie, president and CEO of the MS Society of Canada, could only reply, “We don’t know.”
“The disease is incredibly variable. For some, there will be serious symptoms that will be very invisible, and for others the progression will be very dramatic, very fast and quite debilitating. The disease is very individual in the way that it is variable,” he said.
Savoie said ending MS could ultimately mean many different things in stopping it for people who already have it, preventing it or in reversing it. The society is currently working on all of those fronts.
“One of the very powerful discoveries recently by a Canadian that we’ve funded at Oxford (University), there’s a genetic factor in explaining MS,” Savoie said.
“There are genes that explain why some people are more at risk and we now understand that those genes have as fuel vitamin D. And that may explain some of why MS is so prevalent in Canada, because in the winter months many Canadians are deficient in vitamin D.”
Vitamin D is primarily sourced from exposure to sunshine, dairy products and fatty fish such as salmon and sardines, as well as egg yolks, orange juice and fortified soy and rice beverages, among others.
Savoie also highlighted some disturbing findings about Chinese in Canada.
According to Multiple Sclerosis International, the prevalence of MS in China is between one and 50 for every 100,000 people. The situation, however, changes when looking at immigrants who have come to Canada from countries where the exposure to the sun is different.
Canadians of Chinese origin were 10 times more likely to have MS than people in China, Savoie said. “Some of them have more severe MS than Canadian counterparts of Caucasian origin and that may tell us something about the fact that when you move across the globe, you’re reacting, in fact, to these changes in the environment, including changes in exposure to vitamin D.”
Five years ago, Andrei Sedoff, a 23-year-old Toronto native, started to show signs that he could possibly have MS when he displayed numbness, mobility issues, as well speech and hearing difficulties.
In Aug. 2007, he was officially diagnosed with the disease.
“It was a total blow and (I) felt kind of hopeless because my perception of MS was just a giant horror story. I felt like my future was gone,” Sedoff said.
“But because of the incredible resourcefulness of the MS Society I was able to put MS into context and realize that it’s not a life sentence. It’s really a life journey of managing MS, the many therapies available to Canadians, the many ways to help pay for the treatment and to access services,” he said.
After five years of living with the disease, the towering, healthy looking Sedoff said he had not let MS control his life. For example, last week he participated in a 15 km-run which he completed in 85 minutes.
“Thankfully, I’m in the relapsing, remitting categories, so I’ve been able to bounce back and actually regain all those things that get affected during a relapse,” he said.
Sedoff, who works as a knowledge mobilization officer at York University, said having MS really made him appreciate everything he had, adding that his generation was “truly blessed” with all the access there was in the way of therapies, services and information.
“Information is very important because it is a disease that’s poorly understood to this day, around the world, and an incredibly important component of a good treatment of MS is that you have a good understanding of your condition and you remain hopeful,” he said.
About the Author
Welcome to Free Articles Directory Global Article Lock Article Inter Article
