Researchers to study puzzle of MS cases in small towns

PAW PAW, Ill. -- Harold Ikeler had long thought something in his family caused the multiple sclerosis that killed his wife, put one daughter into a wheelchair and attacked two other daughters.

Then two local women began compiling a list of Paw Paw residents and former residents with the disease -- and they didn't stop until they'd written 13 names. That got the retired farm machinery salesman wondering whether something in this hiccup of a town outside Rockford had unleashed all these cases.

"The ongoing theory is it needs a trigger to start it," said Ikeler, 70, whose only time away from the farm town of 850 was a three-year hitch in the army. "What the trigger is, I have no idea. It's a mystery."

Now it's a mystery that has captured the attention of a team of medical detectives. Researchers from the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford are preparing to study multiple sclerosis here and in four other communities in western and central Illinois: Lewiston, Savanna, Morrison and DePue.

The study is one of five in the United States that each received about $100,000 recently from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a sister agency to the Centers for Disease Control.

The researchers will try to verify what residents say they already know: that the rates of the disorder are far higher in their towns than the national average of roughly one case in every 1,000 people. If true, the rates would be among the highest in the world.

'Drastically wrong'

"Lewiston has 2,700 people, and I've got 14 names," said Monica Smith, a resident who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis two years ago. "Something is drastically wrong here."

Multiple sclerosis is a degenerative disease of the central nervous system, believed to be caused by immune cells attacking the protective myelin sheath surrounding bundles of nerves. Without this insulation, nerve impulses are interrupted, leading to mild, intermittent symptoms for some, and blindness, paralysis and even death from related infections in others.

"We're 16 times the national average," said Beth Buffington, who began researching the disease in Paw Paw after her best friend, Robin Griffin was diagnosed two years ago.

There are plenty of theories, hunches really, about why multiple sclerosis struck these towns.

"I say it's got something do with what we do with our ground," said Velma Kreuder, of Savanna, whose nephew's wife has the disease. "My theory is it has something to do with all the fertilizer and that stuff they put in the ground."