The results of an international trial show stem cell transplants can vastly improve the lives of some people with multiple sclerosis.

The gruelling treatment involves wiping out a patient’s faulty immune system with drugs used to treat cancer – and then rebuilding it using stem cell transplants.

The BBC’s Caroline Wyatt, who was deemed unsuitable for a trial in the UK, paid for a stem cell transplant in Mexico.

Read the article here.

How my MS took hold
Early one evening, the world around me began to spin uncontrollably.

My brain froze as the dizziness took hold. My legs gave way and I collapsed on to a friend’s living room floor.

It was late in 2002 and this was the start of my long, slow path to a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis and, finally last year, a stem cell transplant.

I had spent that week in 2002 filming Siberian tigers in the far east of Russia. We had just flown back through eight time zones to Moscow when I collapsed.

A brain scan showed a lesion on the right side of my brain. It wasn’t clear exactly what that meant. The neurologist told me that while it might be an early sign of MS, it could equally well be nothing to worry about.

“Do come back if you find that you can’t walk,” he said with a polite smile as he showed me out.