Interested in clinical trials? NARCOMS may help.

Clinical trials are not available everywhere nor to everyone. But sometimes there are investigators with an MS treatment safe enough to test who look for months, even years, to find volunteers who fit the research design. At the same time, there are people with MS who want to volunteer, but don't know Don't know (DK, DKed)

"Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. what, if any, trials are available and appropriate for them.

To help the two groups connect, the North American North American

named after North America.

North American blastomycosis
see North American blastomycosis.

North American cattle tick
see boophilusannulatus. Research Committee on Multiple Sclerosis multiple sclerosis (MS), chronic, slowly progressive autoimmune disease in which the body's immune system attacks the protective myelin sheaths that surround the nerve cells of the brain and spinal cord (a process called demyelination), resulting in damaged areas , called NARCOMS NARCOMS North American Research Consortium On Multiple Sclerosis , created a special database. People with MS who register with NARCOMS fill out a detailed questionnaire. The information is strictly confidential, and registration doesn't obligate obligate /ob·li·gate/ (ob´li-gat) pertaining to or characterized by the ability to survive only in a particular environment or to assume only a particular role, as an obligate anaerobe. anyone to take part in any study. But information is then available to scientists who need volunteers or data for research.

The idea seems to be working. Since the startup in 1998, NARCOMS has registered more than 17,000 people with MS. Everyone who registers now receives a free subscription to MS Quarterly Report, a newsletter edited by NARCOMS director, Dr. Timothy Vollmer. The publication is devoted to research findings and brief descriptions of clinical trials.

To register with NARCOMS, call 1-800-253-7884 to request an enrollment booklet, or log on to <http://www.narcoms.org> and enroll on-line.

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Publication:	Inside MS
Date:	Sep 22, 2000
Words:	201
Previous Article:	Alternative Medicine on the Web.
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Topics:	Clinical trials Methods Medical research Standards Multiple sclerosis Research

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