From
The Denver Post. In the picture, Jimmy Dunlap, left, gives a knuckle bump to his friend and supporter Tyler Hamilton on Tuesday as Dunlap becomes the first to donate blood to the UC Denver MS blood repository, which Hamilton's foundation helped fund.
A repository for thousands of vials of frozen blood could one day contribute to a cure for multiple sclerosis.
The University of Colorado Denver medical campus August 11 became the ninth site in a national repository project aimed at fighting the neurological disease.
Researchers around the globe can apply to study the blood samples as well as have access to 89-page questionnaires that detail patients' heritage, health history, lifestyle choices and exposure to everything from paint thinners to hair products and ammunition.
The hope is to determine the combination of genetic and environmental factors that puts a person at risk for multiple sclerosis, and perhaps find a way to predict and cure the disease.
MS is a complex genetic disease, brought on by the way genes interact with environmental factors.
Researchers are struggling to understand why it is more prevalent in certain pockets of the world — such as the northern band of the U.S. — and why it is found in its highest concentrations in temperate climates near 40 degrees north latitude and 40 degrees south latitude.
One recent study found that people who had mononucleosis, commonly called mono, as teenagers were at higher risk for developing multiple sclerosis later in life.
"This is not a simple gene-mutation issue," said Dr. Timothy Vollmer, a neuroimmunologist and professor at the UCD School of Medicine in Aurora. "We have a lot to learn yet before we are able to predict it. I'm not sure we ever will."
An estimated 400,000 to 800,000 people in the United States have multiple sclerosis. Colorado's rate is one in 580 residents. That's one of the highest in the nation, according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. It is the leading cause of disability in young women and the second-leading cause of disability in young men.
The disease is more prevalent in people of northern European descent — Irish, Swedes, Norwegians — and in women.
Until recently, studies of the disease focused on animals. That's why the blood repository — called the Accelerated Cure Project for Multiple Sclerosis — is key to advancing research, Vollmer said.
The project, based in Massachusetts, has collected blood from more than 1,000 patients. The first person to give blood at the new Colorado collection site — the Rocky Mountain MS Center — was Jimmy Dunlap, a 49-year-old Fort Collins man struck with the disease in 2000.
For Dunlap, a cyclist who raced in the amateur circuit, the first signs of the disease were stinging and numbness in his arm and leg and super fatigue. At first, he blamed it on over-training.
Then one day Dunlap started to slur his words and lost all feeling in his right leg.
Symptoms of the disease would come on strong and then fade, until three years ago when it began to progress more rapidly, Dunlap said. Now he struggles to ride his bike around the park.
"I kind of went to the bottom to figure out you can live or you can die," he said. "Dying wasn't an option."
It was fitting — and planned — that Dunlap was the first to give blood at the Colorado collection site. He is a longtime friend of Tyler Hamilton, a former professional road cyclist who won an Olympic gold medal.
Hamilton, of Boulder, started MS Global — an annual charity race — and helped raise $100,000 to keep the Colorado repository site open for the next two years. He started the Tyler Hamilton Foundation after a family friend with multiple sclerosis asked him to ride in a charity race in Boston.
Four hours of cycling with MS patients and their families changed his take on life, Hamilton said.
"It was kind of a wake-up call for me," he said. "I realized how lucky I am."
The repository project also has collection sites in Maryland, Texas, New York, Georgia, Ohio and Arizona and two in Massachusetts.
The new collection site adds to an ever-expanding body of MS research at the University of Colorado. The Rocky Mountain MS Center at the Anschutz Medical Campus is now involved in 18 clinical trials of MS drugs and for 30 years has collected the brains of deceased multiple sclerosis patients for research.
From The Denver Post. In the picture, Jimmy Dunlap, left, gives a knuckle bump to his friend and supporter Tyler Hamilton on Tuesday as Dunlap becomes the first to donate blood to the UC Denver MS blood repository, which Hamilton's foundation helped fund.
