BNAC Study: 55% of MS patients have CCSVI

The long-awaited results from the Buffalo study have been announced.  They have found that 55% of MS patients (or perhaps up to 65%, if some "perhaps-not-really-MS" subjects are excluded) have some kinds of obstructions in their veins.  This is not the 90-95% reported by Zamboni and Simka, and this is disappointing to those who wished to have Zamboni's early results completely validated, but it is certainly enough to say that the theory that CCSVI causes MS has very significant evidence backing it up.  Given the complexity of MS and difficulty in being sure that an MS diagnosis is correct, this is a hugely significant correlation.  Of some concern, however, was the finding that almost a quarter of non-MS subjects were also found to have enough venous deformations to label them as having CCSVI.  Are these people who are prone to getting MS in the future, but are missing some extra "trigger" that causes MS in others?  As is often the case in research, answering some questions just leads to a host of others.

More personally, this means that the risk of traveling to Poland to be assessed only to find out I don't have CCSVI has seemingly increased.  Still, gambling on being assessed with CCSVI and then being "liberated" is the only thing on the horizon that seems to give any hope of stopping the progression of my darn MS.

The press release from the University of Buffalo can be found at http://www.buffalo.edu/news/10937.  One of the major TiMS threads discussing the findings are at http://www.thisisms.com/ftopict-10204.html.