Multiple sclerosis often strikes without warning, many times attacking people in their 20s and 30s. Now, researchers at the Mayo Clinic are testing a new drug to see if it might be able to prevent many of the debilitating symptoms of MS from ever developing, KMBC's Kelly Eckerman reported.

When 22-year-old Melissa Biglay gets a flare-up of MS, she can't control her car.

"I'd always over-throttle and run into walls and things," she said.

The disease leaves Biglay unable to control her body.

"My left hand would be numb, balance would be off. It would be pretty hard to walk," she said.

But Biglay is getting an experimental medication that seems to be preventing the symptoms. MS causes inflammation in the spinal cord and brain. The inflammation damages the nerve covering, called myelin. The damage blocks nerve impulses from being transmitted.

It's too early to know for sure if the new drug may stop the damage from progressing, but Dr. Dean Wingerchuk, a Mayo neurologist, seems hopeful.

"If we treat very aggressively early in the disease, and get rid of as much inflammation as possible, we will be able to delay or, perhaps even, in some people, prevent the nerve degeneration -- the progression that occurs down the road," Wingerchuk said.

Instead of being injected several times a week like many other MS treatments, the new drug is given intravenously in one week, one time a year.

If the drug proves effective, it could bring a big change to MS patients, Eckerman reported.

On The Net:

Mayo Clinic's Report On New MS Treatment