THE North-East will be home to one of only three centres in the UK to trial a revolutionary drug for the treatment of primary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS).

Professor David Bates, of the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, told The Northern Echo that once it gets under way he plans to recruit at least ten patients with this form of MS for the trial.

Unlike remitting relapsing MS, where patients experience periods of relief and then sudden outbreaks, patients with primary progressive MS experience a gradual deterioration of their condition.

The patients will be given a daily pill containing fingolimod, a new drug that has already shown promise in treating MS patients with the remitting relapsing form of the disease.

Last month, the results of two international drug trials – which included a small number of patients from the RVI – were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The trials confirmed that fingolimod is twice as effective as interferon, which is commonly used to treat the relapsing remitting form of MS.

They also showed that taking daily fingolimod pills was more effective than taking dummy placebo pills.

Now drug manufacturer Novartis is organising a large multi-centre international trial to see if fingolimod can be used to reduce the symptoms of patients with a different form of MS.

At the moment, people with MS have to self-inject at least weekly or travel to hospital to be infused with drugs.

Experts suspect that T-cells, a specialised form of immune cell, is responsible for much of the damage caused in MS.

Fingolimod captures these cells, which are circulating in the bloodstream, and stores them in the lymph nodes.

This means the T-cells are unable to reach the brain and damage the myelin sheaths, which protect nerve cells.

It is this scarring to the myelin sheaths that disrupts nerve signals from the brain to the body and produces the symptoms of MS.

Prof Bates said the primary progressive trial of fingolimod had been delayed because of uncertainty about the correct dosage, but once it got underway he would probably recruit ten or more patients.

MS is the most common disabling neurological condition affecting young adults in the UK, with about 100,000 people currently affected.

Apart from Newcastle, the other UK centres involved in the trial will be London and Norwich.