Are MS lesions considered brain damage?

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease of the central nervous system that causes damage to your brain, spinal cord, and optic nerves. It's characterized by lesions, or areas of tissue damage that occur when your immune system behaves abnormally and attacks these areas.

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Are brain lesions considered brain damage?

Brain lesions are areas of damaged brain tissue. This kind of damage happens because of brain injuries or medical conditions. A stroke, for example, is a type of brain lesion.

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Can MS lesions on the brain heal?

Can Lesions Heal Once They Appear? “Absolutely,” says Dr. Hua. “It's not specific to MS, but in any process where there's some sort of brain injury, there will always be healing, as well.

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What does it mean if an MRI shows lesions on the brain?

Brain lesions

Here the brain lesion depicts tissue damage from an ischemic stroke — a state of severely reduced blood flow to the brain, which deprives brain cells of vital oxygen and nutrients.

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What is the average number of lesions in MS?

An “average” number of lesions on the initial brain MRI is between 10 and 15. However, even a few lesions are considered significant because even this small number of spots allows us to predict a diagnosis of MS and start treatment.

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27 related questions found

How quickly do MS lesions develop?

Most symptoms develop abruptly, within hours or days. These attacks or relapses of MS typically reach their peak within a few days at most and then resolve slowly over the next several days or weeks so that a typical relapse will be symptomatic for about eight weeks from onset to recovery.

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Do MS lesions get worse over time?

But most people go on to develop symptoms that gradually get worse, known as secondary progressive MS. Recent work has found that many MS lesions are still actively damaging nerve fibres even when you aren't experiencing a relapse. These are called slowly evolving lesions.

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Do MS lesions ever disappear?

These mature cells are able to produce myelin and can create a new sheath for nerve fibers, a process referred to as remyelination. Thus, sometimes, lesions can be repaired and disappear, and not be detected on subsequent MRI scans.

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Does everyone with MS have lesions on the brain?

About 5 percent of people who are confirmed to have MS do not initially have brain lesions evidenced by MRI. However, the longer a person goes without brain or spinal cord lesions on MRI, the more important it becomes to look for other possible diagnoses.

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How common are brain lesions MS?

It's not clear how common brain lesions are with MS. According to researchers, they occur in 6% to 82% of MS cases. 1 A brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan and occasionally evoked potential tests are used to detect MS lesions in the brainstem.

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Are brain lesions always serious?

A brain lesion may involve small to large areas of your brain, and the severity of the underlying condition may range from relatively minor to life-threatening.

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What are the long term effects of brain lesions?

Left untreated, many brain lesion types may eventually lead to the development of complications such as for example respiratory depression, loss of muscle function, or widespread brain cell death leading to seizures and coma.

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Can you live a long life with a brain lesion?

Some brain tumours grow very slowly (low grade) and cannot be cured. Depending on your age at diagnosis, the tumour may eventually cause your death. Or you may live a full life and die from something else. It will depend on your tumour type, where it is in the brain, and how it responds to treatment.

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What is life expectancy with brain lesions?

The 5-year relative survival rate for a cancerous brain or CNS tumor is almost 36%. The 10-year survival rate is over 30%. The survival rates for a brain tumor vary based on several factors.

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What triggers MS lesions?

In MS, the term lesion refers to an area of damage or scarring in the central nervous system. Lesions are caused by inflammation or the immune system attacking the myelin sheath on nerves in the brain, spinal cord or optic nerve.

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Can stress cause more MS lesions?

US researchers have studied the development of new MRI lesions in 36 people with MS and correlated these with stressful life events. After major life stresses, people were roughly 1.6 times more likely to develop a new lesion in the next eight weeks.

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Where are most MS lesions found?

MS lesions developed preferentially in the supratentorial brain, particularly the frontal lobe and the sublobar region.

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Can MS be mild forever?

Contents. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a condition that can affect the brain and spinal cord, causing a wide range of potential symptoms, including problems with vision, arm or leg movement, sensation or balance. It's a lifelong condition that can sometimes cause serious disability, although it can occasionally be mild.

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What is the average age of death for someone with MS?

The study found that people with MS lived to be 75.9 years old, on average, compared to 83.4 years old for those without. That 7.5-year difference is similar to what other researchers have found recently.

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Can you tell how old MS lesions are?

The gadolinium highlights the areas where inflammation is happening. If the lesion does not light up, then it is likely to be an older lesion, and more than 3 months old. An MRI scan using gadolinium is also known as an MRI scan with contrast.

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How can you tell if MS is progressing?

To figure out if disease is progressing, doctors use a scale called the Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS). The EDSS is a way of measuring physical disability. Two-thirds of those with MS will not progress past level 6 on the EDSS.

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