RESEARCH IS PROMISING FOR DESTRUCTIVE MS MULTIPLE APPROACHES TRIED.

Byline: DANA BARTHOLOMEW

Staff Writer

Twenty-four years ago, Scott Skolnik felt a sudden attack of numbness to his backside, stomach and legs.

The culprit, he would learn, was multiple sclerosis or MS -- a debilitating disease that affects the central nervous systems of more than 300,000 Americans.

"I'm getting a wedgie -- all of a sudden my legs are tingly, like something was wrapped around them," said Skolnik, 49, of Encino, who is now disabled from the disease. "For years, I'd just live with this stuff."

While no cure has been found, some of the nation's top medical researchers on Saturday celebrated recent strides that may help solve what was once deemed a hopeless "mystery disease."

During a roundtable symposium at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel, doctors from the Nancy Davis Center Without Walls highlighted research that may point to potential cures for MS.

They also stressed the importance of federal funding for stem cell and MS research.

"Progress is coming more quickly for us and we're more enthusiastic than ever," said Dr. Stephen Hauser of the University of California, San Francisco, one of seven medical centers that collaborates on MS research for the Center Without Walls.

"We must never underestimate the challenges as well," he said.

Multiple sclerosis, which strikes twice as many women as men, can be as crippling as it can be unpredictable.

Categorized as an autoimmune disease, its mostly adult sufferers can experience numbness in their limbs, fatigue, pain, difficulty walking, loss of vision and memory, slurred speech and severe depression.

Until recently, doctors offered scant hope for sufferers.

"When I was diagnosed 15 years ago, I was told I would never walk again, that I should go home, go to bed -- that the most I could do was operate the remote control on my TV set," said Nancy Davis, whose foundation raised $2.5 million Friday for MS research.

"It was devastating."

No more. Fourteen years after Davis founded The Race to Erase MS, the mother of five is up and walking.

Researchers have found that MS not only destroys the insulation for the electrical "wires" to the brain and spinal cord, but the very nerves themselves.

Doctors on Saturday said research is being conducted into the protection and repair of nerve "wires," called axons, through stem cell research.

Studies are also being conducted into the effect on MS of genetics, chemotherapy, drug "cocktails," vitamin D, pregnancy, the herpes virus and alternative therapies such as ginkgo biloba and yoga.

A study will soon be published announcing benefits for MS from treatments for lymphoma cancer.

"This is not a sprint; it is a marathon," said Dr. Bruce Trapp of the Cleveland Clinic. "But we're making tremendous progress and we believe that some day remedies will be available."

For Skolnik, a pharmacy theft investigator until he was forced to go on disability for MS, help can't come soon enough.

"I'm tired by 1 o'clock, I'm exhausted," he said. "I don't know if one day I'm going to wake up and not be able to move at all.

"You've got to be tough. ... It is a nasty disease."

dana.bartholomew(at)dailynews.com

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For more information on the Nancy Davis Foundation for Multiple Sclerosis and the Center Without Walls, go to www.erasems.org

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