Woman with MS Finds Help from Jellyfish: Quality of Life for Washington Housewife Improves

July 2, 2010 - PRLog -- Madison, Wisconsin, June 30, 2010 — For those of us fortunate enough not to have felt the ravages of multiple sclerosis, the subtle ways this disease can change even the most routine things in life cannot be imagined.  To be aware, you’d have to either have the disease or be part of a family where one has been afflicted with MS.

Such is the case of 55-year old Michelle Mussie, a Puyallup, Washington housewife who was diagnosed with the disease in 1999. The effects came soon and were terrifying. “I couldn’t speak, and developed optical neuritis in my right eye.  It affected my whole right side. I used to read an entire novel in one evening — and then I couldn’t.”

A few years ago Michelle found out about a new health supplement that makes use of a protein found in a species of jellyfish, brought to market in 2007 by a Madison, Wisconsin-based company called Quincy Bioscience. The focus of the product was and is on restoring calcium balance related to neurodegenerative disorders as well as destructive age-related mechanisms.

“When I started out taking the supplement”, Michelle continued, “I thought, ‘well, there’s nothing in here that could possibly harm me,’ so I began taking several a day. Then all of a sudden I noticed a dramatic improvement.

(With the onset of the disease) I didn’t like anybody touching my skin, which wasn’t painful exactly, but just felt icky,” Michelle said.  “Then I began to realize, when a family member touched me, I could feel something in my skin, and the nerves were working like they were supposed to.

She noticed she no longer tired as easily as before, and the involuntary twitching she often felt in her legs had diminished.  “I went to Wal-Mart the other day for four hour. Before, I’d had to rely on my husband to brace myself on,” but was now able to do move about on her own.

“I also noticed that I’m gradually able to read more and more, in little bits and pieces,” Michelle said.  “But I’m not up to a whole novel yet.”

In part due to the unsolicited testimonials received like this one from Michelle, HOPE Trials and Quincy Bioscience have joined together with MS advocate and author Shelley Peterman Schwarz to launch an innovative Multiple Sclerosis study to evaluate the effect of the jellyfish protein on quality of life symptoms for people diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

MS HOPE Trials is enrolling participants with all forms of multiple sclerosis at the HOPE Trials website (http://www.hopetrials.com).  By utilizing the internet for both recruitment and data gathering, Quincy Bioscience hopes to reach a large number of people who might otherwise not participate in research due to time and travel limitations.

The trial design is a double-blind, placebo-controlled in which participants and researchers are blinded to which arm they are enrolled.  The study will require six months to complete — and each participant will be asked to track certain functional aspects of living with MS and report their results.

For more information, please visit  www.quincybioscience.com.