Year after year, you’ll find a team of scientists at the top of the Calgary MS Walk’s fundraising leader board and as of Sunday afternoon, the University of Calgary’s MS NeuroTeam has raised over $15,000 for the MS Society’s annual event, according to the MS Walk’s website.
“We’re very fortunate and grateful that, from the MS Society, we get a fair bit of funding,” Shalina Ousman, an MS researcher at the University of Calgary, said. “It really helps to keep us going and running the labs, so this is chance to give back and say, thanks.”
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Ousman’s team is also celebrating a year of promising advances in MS research. Last month, her colleagues Dr. Wee Yong and Dr. Luanne Metz published research that found a popular, inexpensive acne medication can successfully prevent MS symptoms from returning in patients with early forms of the disease.
In another clinical trial, the breastfeeding drug domperidone is being used to treat patients with progressive MS and it’s showing promising initial results as well.
“We haven’t cured this disease, so now we’re trying to put our efforts into progressive MS because really, we have no therapies for that,” Ousman said.
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Ousman says she’s hopeful that within ten years, there will be better treatments available for people with MS, something that walk participant, Tanya Potyondi would like to see as well. The Calgary mother was diagnosed with MS in 2007, today she relies on a scooter to get around.
“It’s been crazy because things have been changing, its been hard for her to do daily tasks,” Potyondi’s young daughter Olivia, said. “It’s hard for her to do what she wanted to do because she wanted to go biking with me and now she can’t.”
“We’re here to fight back and end MS so we can find a cure for my Mom!”
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