Our Mission

Our mission is to share information and design a support service for people who have MSA and also for their carer, family members and friends.

Goals

• Provide a hub for MSA patients & families in the Isle of Man
• Raising awareness of MSA within local charities who provide services to MSA patients, local healthcare professionals and the wider assistance/networks available 
• Create/source opportunities to fund research into the cause, treatments for and hopefully a cure of Multiple System Atrophy

Aim

To give hope and find treatments for multiple system atrophy. To raise funding for research projects to find the cause and ultimately a cure. MSA is an extremely complex disease that is difficult to diagnose and research to find the cause and ultimately a cure may take many years. 

We aim to raise £50,000 per project.

Benefit

With each research project funded we become one step closer, and with your donation we can continue to make positive advancements.

The timeline below provides an historical perspective and a brief snapshot of key milestones:

• 1900 – the two earliest cases of  MSA, with a mainly cerebellar presentation (olivopontocerebellar atrophy – OPCA), were described by Dejerine and Thomas at the Salpetriere Hospital in Paris
• 1925 – Bradbury and Eggleston identify postural hypotension as a clinical syndrome
• 1960 – two American doctors, Shy and Drager, described  two cases with parkinsonism and cerebellar features, emphasising their autonomic features. The term Shy Drager syndrome (SDS) was introduced, but was frequently misapplied to patients with Parkinson’s disease plus autonomic failure
• 1961 – Raymond Adams, another US neurologist, published two cases of striatonigral degeneration (SND), emphasising their parkinsonian presentation
• 1969 – in Oxford, Graham and Oppenheimer first  introduced the term ‘MSA’ as an umbrella term
• 1972 – Sir Roger Bannister, the English former Olympian who ran the first sub-4 minute mile in 1954 and who is one of the Multiple System Atrophy Trust’s (MSA Trust) patrons, distinguished with Oppenheimer between MSA and Parkinson’s disease as the two main causes of neurodegeneration with autonomic failure
• 1989 – the discovery by Papp and Lantos in the UK of glial cytoplasmic inclusions (GCIs) as the hallmark of MSA was a major milestone in the definition of MSA – GCIs are cell structures specifically found in the damaged areas of the brain of someone who has MSA, regardless of whether they were labelled in life as sporadic OPCA, SDS or SND
• 1989 – the first set of  diagnostic criteria for MSA was developed by Quinn
• 1997 – Sarah Matheson, who was diagnosed with MSA in 1993, set up the Sarah Matheson Trust to support people with MSA and their families and carers – this charity later became the MSA Trust in 2010
• 1998 – the discovery of alpha-synuclein immunostaining as a sensitive marker of GCIs ; 1st consensus diagnostic criteria developed
• 2001 – the Sarah Matheson Trust begins to fund scientific research to discover the cause and cure of MSA
• 2003 – the European MSA Study Group is set up – it represents a consortium of scientific investigators committed to clinical trial activity and other research studies aimed at improving the treatment of MSA – the study group develops a unified MSA Rating Scale (UMSARS)
• 2004 – the Queen Square Brain Bank has over 100 MSA cases, essential for future research – it currently has the largest sample of MSA tissue in the world
• 2005 – the MSA Trust sets up an independent research advisory panel to advise on and develop the Trust’s support for research and oversee the allocation of its grant money
• 2007 – the 2nd scientific consensus committee update diagnostic criteria to those currently used
• 2015 - Manx MSA Trust is founded to help raise awareness and funding for research