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Amid the centuries-old castles of the ancient city of Ferrara is a doctor who has come upon an entirely new idea about how to treat multiple sclerosis, one that may profoundly change the lives of patients.

Dr. Paolo Zamboni, a former vascular surgeon and professor at the University of Ferrara in northern Italy, began asking questions about the debilitating condition a decade ago, when his wife Elena, now 51, was diagnosed with MS.

Watching his wife Elena struggle with the fatigue, muscle weakness and visual problems of MS led Zamboni to begin an intense personal search for the cause of her disease. He found that scientists who had studied the brains of MS patients had noticed higher levels of iron in their brain, not accounted for by age. The iron deposits had a unique pattern, often forming in the core of the brain, clustered around the veins that normally drain blood from the head. No one had ever fully explained this phenomenon, considering the excess iron a toxic byproduct of the MS itself.

Dr. Zamboni wondered if the iron came from blood improperly collecting in the brain. Using Doppler ultrasound, he began examining the necks of MS patients and made an extraordinary finding. Almost 100 per cent of the patients had a narrowing, twisting or outright blockage of the veins that are supposed to flush blood from the brain. He then checked these veins in healthy people, and found none of these malformations. Nor did he find these blockages in those with other neurological conditions.

"In my mind, this was unbelievable evidence that further study was necessary to understand the link between venous function and iron deposits on the other," Zamboni told W5 from his research lab in Ferrara.

What was equally astounding, was that not only was the blood not flowing out of the brain, it was "refluxing" reversing and flowing back upwards. Zamboni believes that as the blood moves into the brain, pressure builds in the veins, forcing blood into the brain's grey matter where it sets off a host of reactions, possibly explaining the symptoms of MS.

"For me, it was really unbelievable to understand that iron deposits in MS were exactly around the veins. So probably, it is a dysfunction of drainage of the veins," Zamboni said.

"This is very important, because iron is very dangerous, because it produces free radicals, and free radicals are killers for cells. So we need to eliminate iron accumulation."

Zamboni dubbed the vein disorder he discovered CCSVI, or Chronic Cerebrospinal Venous Insufficiency, and began publishing his preliminary research in neurology journals.

He soon found that the severity of the vein blockages were located corresponded to the severity of the patient's symptoms. Patients with only one vein blocked usually had milder forms of the disease; those with two or more damaged veins had more severe illness.

Zamboni found blockages not only in the veins in the neck directly beneath the brain -- the jugular veins --but in a central drainage vein, the azygos vein, which flushes blood down from the brain along the spine. Blockages here, he found were associated with the most severe form of MS, primary progressive, in which patients rapidly deteriorate. For this form of MS, there currently is no effective treatment.

As for how these vein abnormalities form, Zamboni isn't sure. He believes, though, that congenital defects, problems that likely formed before birth, can be blamed for most of the problems, though this has not been conclusively proven.