I have been clasified and RRMS for 22 years, however in recent years I've had no relapses. My MRI's show no new lessions but they are showing some Brain Atrophy. So I think I am probably SPMS now....
I have taken ALA as one of my supplements for many years. Almost as long as I been taking Biotin! However the last couple of years i have been getting a little sloppy in taking it. Often only taking it once a month.....
Today I stumbled across this study[1] from 2018 involving Lipoic Acid (LA) and Brain Atrophy. In this study, even though ALA did demonstrate an improvement in timed 20' walk it was not significantly better, but it did show significanly less percentage change in brain volume (PCBV), a measure of brain atrophy.
LA demonstrated a 68% reduction in annualized PCBV.
So..... I am ging to keep up my ALA supplements.
References:
- Rebecca Spain, Katherine Powers, Charles Murchison, et al. Lipoic acid in secondary progressive MS: A randomized controlled pilot trial. Neurol Neuroimmunol Neuroinflamm 2017;4; DOI 10.1212/NXI.0000000000000374 https://nn.neurology.org/content/nnn/4/5/e374.full.pdf