Chris Lee will be running in the 2010 London Marathon on 25th April 2010 to raise money for the Multiple Sclerosis Resource Centre.
Please click here for information on this very worthy charity.
Please click here to sponsor Chris online.
What is MS?
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic, disabling neurodegenerative disease. It strikes most often during early adulthood, and most common neurological disorder among young adults and was thought to affect about twice as many women as men, although recent research points to an increase in this sex ratio to 4 : 1. Many aspects of MS, including its cause, are not well understood. It is unknown whether MS represents a single disease, or if its symptoms are the result of different diseases that have the same neurodegenerative effects. There is, however, a growing understanding of how the permanent physical and mental disabilities caused by MS arise over time.
MS is characterised by lesions in the central nervous system that interfere with nerve function. These lesions are inflammatory, meaning that immune cells that are normally restricted to the blood have migrated into the brain and the cellular partition between the brain and the blood stream (the blood-brain-barrier) has broken down. Local swelling occurs in the lesion site as cells and water move out of the blood stream into the nervous system tissue.