MS Patients Turn to Ibogaine But Research Has Only Just Begun

A recent case report published in Frontiers of Immunology detailing significant improvements in two multiple sclerosis (MS) patients who received ibogaine treatments is being touted as a breakthrough by several researchers. The case report has also prompted calls for further research by scientists who note the limitations of the data gathered by its authors, including several ibogaine treatment providers serving patients with a range of serious conditions.

“These new remarkable findings from Ambio Life Sciences’ case report show a 71% reduction in the size of white matter lesions in a patient with multiple sclerosis following treatment with ibogaine. This suggests >2/3rd’s of damaged brain tissue was repaired,” Joseph Barsuglia, a clinical and research psychologist working in psychedelic medicine, said in a LinkedIn repost of the case report. Barsuglia adds that he is “looking forward to further study of this promising treatment in larger cohorts.”

Other researchers caution, however, that much more data needs to be gathered before there is any definitive proof that ibogaine can help treat MS, an incurable central nervous system disease that remains a medical enigma. They note that vulnerable people who are looking for relief from currently incurable illnesses without effective treatments should be mindful of the hype around psychedelic therapies and carefully examine the current treatment options. Two of the authors of the case report, who operate a clinic offering ibogaine for a host of conditions, acknowledge that the data they’ve gathered is limited and requires much further research. 

Once an underground anti-addiction treatment, ibogaine is now being used to treat PTSD, traumatic brain injuries, and even complex central nervous system diseases. Research has only just begun, yet those desperately sick with an incurable illness are already spending thousands to travel to distant locales to receive ibogaine treatment. Researchers who follow ibogaine therapy say the case study in Frontiers of Immunology is an opportunity to critically assess the data that’s available – and understand what still needs to be studied to create proven treatments.

Examining the Limited Data 

The case report, entitled “Significant lesion reduction and neural structural changes following ibogaine treatments for multiple sclerosis,” was co-authored by Jonathan Dickinson and Jose Inzuna, co-founders and proprietors of the Ambio Life Sciences Clinic in Tijuana, Mexico, and several researchers based in Canada.  

The two MS patients who were studied arrived at ibogaine therapy with markedly different diagnoses and health backgrounds. The first, Kimberly Andrews, is a former grade school teacher who was diagnosed in 2019 with secondary progressive MS. The second was David Neely, a retired special operations forces veteran with the U.S. military who was diagnosed with early stage relapsing remitting MS, a less severe form of the illness. 

Both patients feel improvement post-treatment, but only Neely is characterized in the report as making a stunning physiological recovery. While Neely still experiences some symptoms of MS, imaging of his brain showed a 71% reduction in the volume of the brain lesions caused by MS, the hallmark of the disease. The discussion section of the report evaluates the brain imaging data collected two months before and three months after Neely received his treatment. 

Unlike Neely, Andrews did not receive her brain imaging until ten months after her treatment, the case report says. In terms of medical research, this lack of consistency in collecting data means that her and Neely’s cases should be regarded as individual outcomes and conclusive evidence. A research study of treating MS with ibogaine, on the other hand, would require more patients, more time, and vigorous parameters for data collection. The language describing Andrews’ improvements also invites a close reading. 

“[Andrews] exhibited cortical and subcortical changes, with cortical thinning in motor regions likely reflecting synaptic pruning of maladaptive pathways, facilitating improved motor coordination. Cortical thickening in the entorhinal cortex and fusiform gyrus suggested enhanced neuroplasticity, potentially improving cognitive and visual processing. Subcortical ventricular alterations implied reduced neuroinflammation, contributing to symptom improvement.”

Here, the terms ‘likely,’ ‘suggested,’ and ‘potentially’ do some heavy lifting, and experts are skeptical of any claims attributed to the paper by observers. “The imaging data for one of the patients is impressive, but it’s hard to know whether this change is a drug effect or a spurious remission unless you do a very long, controlled study,” says George Robertson, a pharmacology professor at Dalhousie University who has studied MS for more than twenty years. “There is a long way to go before ibogaine should be considered as a viable treatment for this disease.”

The report shows that Andrews’s fatigue was drastically reduced after treatment, which Robertson thinks is a good sign for future research. “There’s quite a bit of evidence that mitochondrial dysfunction is part of MS,” says Robertson. Robertson has been examining the effects of ibogaine on increasing energy production in the mitochondria in mouse cells in his own lab. “If you’ve got a compound that can improve energy production by mechanistically increasing the capacity of mitochondria, that could be an important part of what’s happening… It’s all encouraging and exciting, but the burden of proof just isn’t there.” 

W. Oliver Tobin, a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic who specializes in MS, says the case report lacks evidence to suggest ibogaine is effecting the changes observed by the researchers and emphasizes that proper clinical trials for any MS treatment require years of research, controls, and many measurements not accounted for in the Frontiers paper. “The paper lacks specific details about the MS diagnosis of patients, the distribution of lesions, and the vague clinical examinations are all concerning,” Tobin says. “As presented, [the case report] has significant deficits, which renders any conclusions unsupported by the data presented.”

When asked about these observations, Dickinson, one of the report’s co-authors, is quick to acknowledge the validity of these points. “The purpose of this case report is to hopefully prompt further study of ibogaine to treat MS,” Dickinson says. “We’re not saying we’ve found the cure. We’re just saying that people in the scientific community should be paying more attention to this.” 

Balancing the Hopes of Sick People With the Present Data

Despite cautions by researchers on the limitations of the data, the paper comes amidst a wave of publicity for Ambio Life Sciences and other clinics offering ibogaine treatment. In the fast growing offshore business of ibogaine therapy, endorsements of clinics by advocates help them attract clients and generate revenue. In a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, W. Bryan Hubbard, perhaps the most recognizable advocate for the further study and legalization of ibogaine-assisted therapy through a medical model, spoke glowingly of his own experience at the Ambio Life Sciences clinic. 

Hubbard first gained media attention as Chairman and Executive Director of the Kentucky Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission in 2023 and now heads the American Ibogaine Initiative through the REID Foundation. On March 5th, he led a coalition of advocates to support House Bill 3717 in Texas to set up a grant program for ibogaine research there. 

A few weeks before speaking to Rogan’s millions of listeners, Hubbard spoke to a crowd of about thirty participants at The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in New York City’s West Village neighborhood. There, he gave a meticulously researched presentation on the neurological basis of ibogaine’s potential to treat a myriad of disorders. 

“What we know is that Ibogaine has a significant neuro-regenerative impact on the brain, and [we also] have bits and pieces of information from individuals and even smaller scale studies, which suggest that ibogaine could provide significant relief to individuals who suffer from incurable, intractable, neurological conditions,” Hubbard told Lucid News in a recent interview. He says that these realities illustrate two necessities: “One, that there must be a significant accelerated focus on research development around all of ibogaine’s neurotherapeutic applications. Anytime we see even slight evidence that medication can potentially deliver breakthrough therapeutic results for a suffering individual, we need to put the pedal to the metal on thorough research and scientific application.” 

Hubbard’s co-presenter at the West Village talk, Juliana Mulligan, a psychotherapist and an expert on ibogaine therapy, says she has concerns about the use of ibogaine to treat  MS at this stage in the research of the molecule. 

“At this point, the evidence is unclear that ibogaine helps with MS, and there’s not nearly enough to decide on a protocol that works for it,” warns Mulligan. “There’s a lot more data needed to understand this application, and when you put out a paper like this, it’s a big responsibility, and you’d better be thorough. You’re suggesting this is potentially a miracle treatment, and you’re saying this to a lot of vulnerable, desperate people who are very sick, and that gets their hopes up.”

As an ibogaine advocate, Hubbard agrees that great care must be exercised as research pushes forward, thus amplifying what he views as a second necessity. “I believe it is best to under promise and over deliver,” he says. Hubbard believes it’s necessary to be hypervigilant with a public that already has low confidence in the ability of public institutions to deliver honesty or competency. 

In light of the high levels of cynicism and distrust in healthcare systems, Hubbard says, “it is incumbent upon us to speak hopefully yet cautiously about the fact that we’ve got to build a bridge between theoretical potential and reality. That bridge is a long way from being constructed, but there are a lot of people working hard to get it built as quickly as we can.” 

Fighting An Enigma

For Kimberly Andrews, waiting for research to catch up to what patients have experienced wasn’t an option. Her day-to-day struggles with MS – and its relentless progression – illustrate why many people with this illness are so eager to seek promising, but still unproven, therapies like ibogaine. 

A grade school teacher from Fayette, Utah, with three sons, Andrews began experiencing strange symptoms in 2017. Her limbs would jolt with spasms and she occasionally lost the use of her left leg at random. “At one point, I fell in the bathroom and hit my chin badly, and that was a big wake-up call.” A year later, after having her spinal fluid sampled and studied by a neurologist, she was diagnosed with Secondary Progressive MS. “Once I had the information, I wasn’t shocked,” Andrews remembers, “but I was afraid.” 

MS is a true medical enigma. Its cause is unknown, as is its cure. Some one million Americans are living with central nervous system diseases that fall under its categorical umbrella. The immune system attacks the brain communication network, tricking white blood cells into eating away at the protective coating of the wirelike nerve fibers. Because these neural circuits carry signals to the rest of the body,  MS can affect a wide range of basic bodily functions from sight and movement to bowel control and critical thinking. While effective treatments to deal with many of its symptoms are available, there’s no stopping the disease’s most serious forms, including the Secondary Progressive MS Andrews lives with. 

The seriousness of the condition made her fight for survival crystal clear. Andrews tried a host of therapies, including having steroids injected directly into her spinal cord to deal with the pain, but found herself having to cease work due to extreme fatigue. She took familiar MS medications like Copaxone to reduce her spastic episodes, but the side effects made daily living highly unpleasant. She even tried mesenchymal stem cells, another unproven therapy, to help increase her energy. “I had plenty of doctors do their best, but nobody could help me make much of a difference,” Andrews remembers. 

Common treatments exist for acute relapses of MS, and others exist to help improve the overall quality of life. They are known as disease-modifying therapies (DMTs), including Tecifedra, but many of these carry severe side effects. Since 2017, doctors have prescribed CD-20 Inhibitors, drugs that harness a combination of human and non-human antibodies that latch onto white blood cells and redirect them to help patients manage their symptoms.

Part of the challenge with treating MS is its uniqueness from patient to patient. Some MS patients experience the disease as isolated incidents that occur episodically over the course of their life, known as relapsing-remitting MS. There are RRMS patients who have a single episode before the disease seems to dissipate entirely. For others with primary and secondary progressive MS, like Andrews, the disease is part of their daily life, slowly chipping away at the body’s command center until they’re immobilized and require a great deal of care. 

After more than a year of spinal injections, Andrews was still completely at the mercy of her illness. Her spasms were so painful that doctors eventually gave her an onslaught of opioids to cope. “Taking Percocets [oxycodone] every two hours and two fentanyl patches every day cut through this,” Andrews recalls, “but I wasn’t really there anymore… I was in another world.” 

In late 2019, Andrews underwent surgery to have an Intrathecal Baclofen Pump (ITB Pump) implanted in her abdomen. ITB pumps are small metallic discs about the size of a pocket watch that deliver muscle relaxers directly into the spinal fluid through open spaces between our vertebrae. 

The surgery was a success, and just as the COVID-19 pandemic came into full swing, Andrews’s fog of opioids cleared, but only to be replaced by one of exhaustion. Her ITB pump was causing her to be chronically fatigued. “We lived out in the middle of nowhere, and I needed my boys to help me take a shower.” It was around this time that her husband and partner of 17 years left. 

Seeking New Treatments and Finding Ibogaine

With a host of new challenges in her life, Andrews kept researching ways to improve. She joined a plant medicine group on Facebook, attended physical therapy religiously, and explored new treatment options wherever she could. While finding some small respite in legal ketamine infusions at a clinic in Utah, she began talking to Dickinson about taking ibogaine to help with her post-traumatic stress. 

Someone in the Facebook group recommended the Ambio Life Sciences clinic, and Andrews thought the treatment would help her unravel her post-traumatic stress as an avenue to clarifying her MS. “I knew that I had trauma, and I felt that there may be a connection between that and my MS,” says Andrews. After reading about how people with MS were having success with psychedelics, Andrews became curious about their  potential for her condition. “I’d initially looked at ayahuasca, but I’m disabled. I’m not going to the jungle.”

Andrews scraped and saved the $6,000 her treatment would cost, and in 2023, she traveled to the Ambio Life Sciences Clinic in Mexico. “As soon as I got to the clinic, I was asked to prepare questions for the medicine,” Andrews recalls. “I wanted to know why I was so sick!” 

She remembers seeing a door in her mind during the treatment. “The door,” says Andrews, “represents the nervous system response I had to being sexually harmed as a small child. I don’t know that my body reacted the same way to the traumas I’ve had since then, but it felt connected, and that made sense to me. When something makes sense, you’re less afraid of it.”

In the months after her treatment, Andrews says she worked with Dickinson and the clinicians at Ambio to keep track of her progress. The discussions ranged from the dreams and visions she’d had to the physical state of her body. With some stability support, she can do weight-free workouts for up to an hour now. For a time, she continued microdosing ibogaine and went through intensive meditations, where she was able to acknowledge some hard truths. 

“All of this work led to me realizing I had to leave my kids with someone who can take better care of them. I love them so much, and in an intense meditation after I got back from my ibogaine, I was able to forgive myself for not being able to care for them as the mom I want to be.” 

Now, almost a year after moving back to Oklahoma, Andrews sees her journey through her illness differently. “Doctors and therapists told me I’d never be able to walk again, but here I am,” Andrews says, describing the thrill of taking a few steps with the help of ankle braces. “Ibogaine may not have healed my MS, but it’s healed my spirit. It’s given me clarity and a reason to hope.”