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Welcome
Introduction
How
to register as a tissue donor
Raising awareness of all those affected by MS
Donation
of Tissue
Requesting
tissue for research on multiple sclerosis
Promoting the Tissue Bank in the research community
The Bank
Statement
Articles
Links:
Department
of Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
Department
of Neuropathology
Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great
Britain and Northern Ireland
International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis
Societies
E-mail: ukmstissuebank@imperial.ac.uk
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the Bank Statement
Issue One
(The Bank Statement is also available as a PDF document.)
A facility
for tissue donors
Our success in promoting
the work of the Tissue Bank, and the generosity and forethought of people
wanting to make a special contribution to research is demonstrated by the
fact that 1661 people (80% of whom have MS) are currently registered as
tissue donors. The graph below shows how the number of people requesting an
Information Pack (blue line) and registering as donors (red line) has
increased over the last 3 years.
The steep rise in the number of
people registering as donors between August and October 1998 coincided with
an invitation to donors originally registered at the Queen Square Bank to
re-register at Charing Cross and the
publication in MS Matters of the first article about the Tissue
Bank. As you will see, there are still about 900 people who have received an
Information Pack and have either not yet sent in their registration forms or
have decided that tissue donation is not right for them. We are encouraged
that the total number of people requesting information and registering as
donors is still steadily rising because we need even more people to
register.
Fulfilling last wishes
Since 1998, we have been in the privileged position of fulfilling the last
wishes of 73 MS patients and 14 non-MS patients who wanted to donate tissue
for MS research. To ensure that the tissue we collect is suitable for use in
the widest range of experiments, we have put in place procedures that allow
it to be collected as quickly as possible after death in order to minimise
its deterioration (within 24 hours if possible, but we will collect all
bequests). This is an important aspect of our work and we are encouraged by
the comments received from donors' next-of-kin on "...how efficiently
and sensitively the procedure had been handled...".
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