When it comes to a multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnosis, patients receive both good news and bad news. The good news is that the disease is probably not deadly; it’s about the same as the general population. The bad news: it’s an incurable neurodegenerative disease that will likely take away your ability to speak, walk, and see. That is, until now. 
 
 For the first time ever, a clinical trial has shown that a combination treatment of both chemotherapy and stem cell therapy could significantly reverse the effects of aggressive relapsing MS in 24 patients. The study, now published in The Lancet, even describes what may be the first ever remission recorded in medical history. That’s right, the treatment, normally reserved for leukemia patients, may have cured MS, The Telegraph reported. 
 
 For some time now, doctors have debated whether MS is actually an autoimmune disease rather than a neurodegenerative one. This is because with MS, the immune system attacks the protective sheaths that cover nerve fibers through the central nervous system. Although the condition is currently incurable, there are treatments that can speed recovery from MS attacks, making it easier to manage symptoms. 
 
 The treatment involves giving patients a medication that forces the stem cells inside their bone marrow to enter the bloodstream. From there, the cells can be harvested, purified, and frozen. Once this is done, the patient’s immune system is completely eradicated with chemo. Then, the patient has their frozen stem cells transplanted back into their bone marrow in an effort to give them a fresh immune system. Looking at MS as an autoimmune disease, this approach makes sense, as it may reboot the immune system to operate without destroying the body. 
 
 At the end of the trial, which began seven years ago, 40 percent of patients experienced a reversal in symptoms, which included loss of vision and balance and muscle weakness. Perhaps the most significant outcome from the study, though, is the recovery of one patient, Jennifer Molson. Diagnosed with MS in 1996, Molson has made a near complete recovery since undergoing the innovative treatment in 2002. Not even five years after her diagnosis, Molson was living in a hospital under 24-hour care and using a cane, walker, and wheelchair to get around, Vox reported. Today, Molson is living without any assisted care and has no trouble walking. 
 
 “Jennifer, she freaked me out one day when she came to the clinic wearing high heels. This was a girl who could barely walk,” researcher Dr. Mark Freedman told The Telegraph. 
 
 While the results are promising, having been hailed as “close to curative,” they are not without their risks. The treatment is especially tough on the body; during the trials, one patient died of liver failure while another required intensive care for liver complications. 
 
 “This treatment does offer hope, but it’s also an aggressive procedure that comes with substantial risks and requires specialist aftercare,” Dr. Emma Gray, head of clinical trials at the MS Society, told The Telegraph. “If anyone is considering HSCT we’d recommend they speak to their neurologist.” 
 
 Source: Atkins HL, Bowman M, Allan D, et al. Immunoablation and autologous haemopoietic stem-cell transplantation for aggressive multiple sclerosis: a multicentre single-group phase 2 trial. The Lancet . 2016 

 Multiple sclerosis (MS) involves an immune-mediated process in which an abnormal response of the body’s immune system is directed against the central nervous system (CNS). The CNS is made up of the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves. 
 
 When myelin or nerve fibers are damaged or destroyed in MS, messages within the CNS are altered or stopped completely. 
 
 Damage to areas of the CNS may produce a variety of neurological symptoms that will vary among people with MS in type and severity 
 
 The damaged areas develop scar tissue which gives the disease its name – multiple areas of scarring or multiple sclerosis. 
 
 The cause of MS is not known, but it is believed to involve genetic susceptibility, abnormalities in the immune system and environmental factors that combine to trigger the disease. 
 
 People with MS typically experience one of four disease courses. There are over a dozen treatments to help modify the MS disease process. 
 
 Within the CNS, the immune system causes inflammation that damages myelin — the fatty substance that surrounds and insulates the nerve fibers — as well as the nerve fibers themselves, and the specialized cells that make myelin.
– The sample size was quite small, but research on patients with multiple sclerosis shows promising results on stopping the progression of the incurable disease that causes the immune system to attack the coating around nerve fibers (and the fibers themselves) in the brain and spinal cord, the BBC reports. Per the study published in the Lancet, 24 MS patients between the ages of 18 and 50 from three different Canadian hospitals were subjected to "strong immunosuppression" treatments, including aggressive chemo, followed up by a stem cell transplant. All of the patients had a poor prognosis and had already tried similar but more conservative MS treatments—but this treatment plan went beyond those, completely wiping out the immune system instead of merely suppressing it, then rebuilding it from scratch with stem cells. The results: The treatments significantly reduced the onset of the disease for 23 out of the 24 patients (one of the patients died). And among the survivors, no one suffered a relapse or showed any sign of the disease over a 13-year period. Per the Telegraph, patients who had been severely disabled could now walk and move about again, even go skiing—leading experts to rave that the "unprecedented" treatment is "close to curative" and could be hailed as the first ever to lead to "complete long-term remission." Medical Daily notes that the treatment may have been effective because it basically treated multiple sclerosis as an autoimmune disease rather than a neurodegenerative one—an ongoing debate between scientists. But while the head of clinical trials for the UK's MS Society says this type of treatment "holds a lot of promise" for MS patients, "it's also an aggressive procedure that comes with substantial risks and requires specialist aftercare." And in addition to the tiny number of subjects examined in the study, there was also no control group—meaning larger, more fleshed-out studies are needed to see if these findings hold real weight. (This type of treatment for MS has only recently been recognized as a potentially life-altering one.)