 LIVERPOOL doctors have discovered what may be a "miracle treatment" for the muscle wasting disease Multiple Sclerosis. Scientists say the treatment, pioneered at the Walton Neurological centre, could herald a major breakthrough for the UK's 85,000 MS sufferers. Patients who were all severely disabled, including some who were confined to wheelchairs and others who went blind, last night described how they regained the ability to walk and see. Doctors at Walton began treating patients with a combination of a chemotherapy drug normally used to treat cancer called mitoxantrone, with an MS anti-relapse drug Copaxone, in 2001. An official, but unfunded, trial on 27 patients over the last year was so successful the treatment is now being introduced at 10 centres across the UK to test its effectiveness more rigorously. It comes after a damning report by the MS Trust and the Royal College of Physicians yesterday found the NHS was failing MS sufferers with a "low quality and inadequate quantity" of services. Last night the country's largest MS support group said thousands of lives could be changed if the larger trial echoes the "fantastic" Walton results. Walton patient Karen Ayres, diagnosed in 2002 after she fell in a nightclub, said: "I really do see it as a miracle cure." The 28-year-old travel agent from Newton-Le-Willows spent three months paralysed in hospital and thought she would never walk again. But four years after starting the treatment she has regained the full use of her body, finished a Masters Degree in psychology, backpacked across five continents, and returned to work. "It's no exaggeration to say I feel as though the treatment has given me my life back." Another patient, mother-of-two Jayne Clarke, suffered extreme fatigue and balance problems when her MS reached aggressive levels in 2003. After a short course of mitoxantrone she started treatment with daily Copaxone injections. She is now relapse free, and recently ran the 5km charity Race for Life. | 
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