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Shelley Osterloh ReportingUtah has a highest incidence rate of Multiple Sclerosis in the country with one out of every 500 people suffering with the disease. A new drug is helping some people who battle MS; it is an important breakthrough for many Utahns.
In trials, participants who took the drug, called Tysabri, with another drug, experienced a 54% reduction in the rate of clinical relapses. That's a big improvement to their quality of life.
Walking down the street, going to work, these are things Heidi Adams couldn't do just a few months ago.
Heidi Adams: "Was only able to work a couple of hours a day so I had to work from home most of the time because I didn't have energy to work consistently an eight hour day."
The 33-year old office equipment account executive was diagnosed five years ago with a form Multiple Sclerosis that reoccurs with debilitating flare ups. Since taking the new drug, Tysabri, she says her life has changed.
Heidi Adams: "And I did my first treatment of Tysabri in July, the end of July, and mid-August I went water skiing with my family up at Bear Lake and wake boarded. And I've been working full time."
This month she celebrated her 10th anniversary by snorkeling in Hawaii.
Heidi Adams: "I haven't had that kind of energy in years. It's really been fantastic."
Adams is one of the first to take the new drug, which is administered once a month, intravenously. Tysabri hampers the movement of potentially damaging immune cells from the bloodstream to the brain and spinal cord.
John Foley, MD, Dir. Rocky Mountain Multiple Sclerosis Clinic: "In the two year study, for instance, it dropped the number of flare-ups or exacerbations from 68 to 70 percent to 14. It also appears to reduce the progression of the disability to at least by 42%."
Dr. John Foley, director of the Rocky Mountain MS Clinic, says Tysabri is the newest of several drug breakthrough treatments in development.
John Foley, MD, Dir. Rocky Mountain Multiple Sclerosis Clinic: "We don't really have a cure yet, but these drugs are incremental advances in our ability to at least control the symptoms and keep the disease from getting a lot worse and leading to more disabling conditions."
For people like Heidi, that means being able to live life as she wants to.
Tysabri has had some possible dangerous side effects in some people so it is not for everyone with Multiple Sclerosis and has a very strict protocol. It is also expensive -- more than $2,000 a dose, but it is FDA and Medicare approved.
