Dr. Tony Traboulsee, medical director of the UBC Hospital MS Clinic and assistant professor, UBC Faculty of Medicine
UBC Hospital MS Clinic will be leading a new national CCSVI treatment trial called Phase I/II Interventional Clinical Trial of Balloon Venoplasty for CCSVI (Chronic Cerebrospinal Venous Insufficiency) in Multiple Sclerosis patients.
Led by Dr. Tony Traboulsee, medical director of the UBC Hospital MS Clinic and assistant professor, UBC Faculty of Medicine, along with Dr. Marc Girard, neurologist, Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM) MS Clinic, the study will begin patient recruitment after November 1st at sites in Vancouver and Montreal. The research team hopes to establish additional sites in Winnipeg and Quebec City in the near future.
One hundred MS patients will be recruited to participate in the trial. The goal of the trial is to determine the safety and efficacy of treating CCSVI as an MS strategy, along with quality of life impacts on patients receiving treatment for venous insufficiency. The hope is that the trial will provide concrete evidence that will move the discussion on CCSVI forward – in terms of how it relates to MS, including cause and effect in MS, as well as venoplasty as a potential treatment option for the disease.
The trial is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), with support from the provinces of British Columbia and Quebec, and the MS Society of Canada. For more specific information about this trial, visit http://www.vchri.ca/s/MS-CCSVI-PII.asp.
The UBC Hospital MS Clinic is a world leader for innovative research using MRI to study and evaluate Multiple Sclerosis treatments as well as genetic epidemiology.
To read the news release from CIHR click here.