CJD drug shows signs of success

Main Category: CJD / vCJD / Mad Cow Disease
Article Date: 14 Dec 2004 - 17:00 PDT

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A patient suffering from Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (vCJD), the human form of BSE, has reportedly become the first person to contract the disease to be no longer regarded as terminally ill.

Jonathan Simms, 20, from Belfast, Northern Ireland, has been taking an experimental drug, pentosan polysulphate.

Mr Simms was diagnosed with the brain wasting disease three years ago and was given only months to live, but his parents eventually won a legal battle in the High Courts in Belfast and London in order to allow him to take the new drug. He is now the longest known survivor of vCJD and the first sufferer to begin taking the drug.

Pentosan polysulphate is a blood-thinning and anti-inflammatory drug, which had previously only been tested on animals. Mr Simms father, Don, discovered its existence whilst carrying out research on the Internet.

"Jonathan is very stable," Don Simms told BBC Radio Ulster. "The general consensus is that Jonathan Simms is no longer terminally ill. He is no longer in the last days or weeks of life - we hope they [the doctors] are right."

After two spells in a Northern Ireland hospital where a top neurosurgeon infused the drug directly into his brain, Mr Simms has been cared for by his parents and medical staff at his home in West Belfast.

http://www.hda-online.org.uk

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