An American neurologist and an Italian epidemiologist whose work revolutionized the treatment of multiple sclerosis on Saturday won a prestigious Breakthrough Prize, the award nicknamed the “Oscars of science.”
Stephen Hauser and Alberto Ascherio were recognized 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 her life,” he said.
“I remember seeing her, unable to speak, paralyzed on…