Health minister rejects MS therapy trial

The Canadian government will not fund a clinical trial of the so-called liberation therapy for multiple sclerosis at this time, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq says.

Aglukkaq spoke to reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday, a day after a panel of North American experts announced they unanimously recommended against supporting a clinical trial of the treatment in Canada as yet.

Aglukkaq commissioned the expert panel's report from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, which funds medical research, and the MS Society of Canada.

"I feel the most prudent course of action at this time is to accept the recommendation of the country's leading researchers," Aglukkaq told a news conference.

Liberation therapy is based on an unproven theory of chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency (CCSVI) — put forward by Italian doctor Paolo Zamboni — that blocked veins in the neck or spine are to blame for MS. Zamboni proposed treating multiple sclerosis by inflating small balloons to open up veins.

Some Canadians are spending thousands of dollars to seek the experimental treatment overseas.

CIHR head Dr. Alain Beaudet said experts weren't convinced Zamboni's procedure works and is safe. Beaudet said he advised Aglukkaq that it was too early to back clinical trials.

Safety questions

In June, the MS society and its U.S. counterpart awarded a combined $2.4 million in research grants to diagnostic studies aimed at testing whether Zamboni's theory is correct, by checking for abnormal blood flow in the veins in people with MS and healthy controls using ultrasound, MRI or catheters with dye. The research projects are expected to take two years.

Yves Savoie, the president of the MS Society of Canada, said Wednesday that his organization would monitor the results of the studies.

If they suggest there is a clear link between occluded veins and MS, then the society will recommend that a clinical trial testing vein opening be started quickly.

Beaudet said Zamboni's treatment is currently too risky to try in Canada.

"Any procedure where you inject a catheter in a vein, where you compress the vein, where you risk damage to the internal sheath of the vein, is not without risk."

But MS patient Tim Cant of Whitehorse, who travelled to India to undergo liberation therapy earlier this year, said he and others have seen their conditions improve.

"They talk about us being … one of the best medical systems in the world," Cant told CBC News on Wednesday. "Why is it so many Canadians are now travelling to other places in the world to get this operation done?"

Cant, who was diagnosed with MS three years ago, said if politicians could experience first-hand the physical and mental pain that multiple sclerosis inflicts on people, they would fund clinical trials without hesitation.

Objective measurements

To show liberation therapy works would require objective measurements, such as changes in muscle strength, a reduction in the frequency of relapses of MS symptoms or differences in MRI brain scans, Beaudet said.

Aglukkaq agreed that if evidence from the research projects supports the launching of a clinical trial, then the federal government would allow a pan-Canadian study of the ballooning therapy, called angioplasty, on patients.

Agulukkaq said she doesn't know anyone with MS but has heard anecdotes of Canadians who travelled for the treatment at their own expense.

For months, the federal Liberal position has been that the government should fund research to figure out whether the treatment is of benefit to Canadian patients or not, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said Wednesday at the party's caucus meeting in Baddeck, N.S.

Ignatieff said it's not appropriate for politicians to say which treatment is going to work, but for doctors and scientists to do so, assisted by the federal government.

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall has said his province would fund a clinical trial into the procedure if it receives a research proposal for one.

People with MS say they will return to Parliament Hill on Sept. 22 to urge the federal government to listen to their calls to offer the procedure in Canada.