WASHINGTON, April 6 — An American neurologist and an Italian epidemiologist whose work revolutionised the treatment of multiple sclerosis yesterday won a prestigious Breakthrough Prize, the award nicknamed the “Oscars of science.”
Stephen Hauser and Alberto Ascherio were recognised for their decades researching the debilitating neurodegenerative disease, which affects nearly three million people worldwide and was long considered an impenetrable enigma.
Hauser’s work on multiple sclerosis (MS) started more than 45 years ago, when he met a young patient named Andrea, “an extraordinarily talented young woman who was already an attorney” and working at the White House under then-president Jimmy Carter, he told AFP.
“Then MS appeared in an explosive fashion and destroyed…