Signs of MS may start five years before diagnosis.
Can I have multiple sclerosis for years and not know it? Yes. MS can go undetected for years. Research has suggested that many patients experience MS-related symptoms and signs several years before receiving a definite diagnosis of the disease.
Contents. You may have to adapt your daily life if you're diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), but with the right care and support many people can lead long, active and healthy lives.
People with multiple sclerosis (MS) tend to have their first symptoms between the ages of 20 and 40. Usually the symptoms get better, but then they come back. Some come and go, while others linger. No two people have exactly the same symptoms.
MS can occur at any age, but onset usually occurs around 20 and 40 years of age. However, younger and older people can be affected. Sex. Women are more than 2 to 3 times as likely as men are to have relapsing-remitting MS .
Benign MS may simply represent a long period of remission in which few or no symptoms are present. According to studies, up to 10% of people with MS have a benign disease course, meaning that they experience no relapses and have a mild, stable form of disability that develops over time.
Here's where MS (typically) starts
Although a number of MS symptoms can appear early on, two stand out as occurring more often than others: Optic neuritis, or inflammation of the optic nerve, is usually the most common, Shoemaker says. You may experience eye pain, blurred vision and headache.
Blood Tests: Currently, there are no definitive blood tests for diagnosing MS, but they can be used to rule out other conditions that may mimic MS symptoms, including Lyme disease, collagen-vascular diseases, rare hereditary disorders and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
MRI scans confirm a diagnosis in over 90 per cent of people with MS. To get the image of your brain and spinal cord you'll be asked to lie down and enter a small tunnel in the centre of the MRI scanner.
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.
your genes – MS isn't directly inherited, but people who are related to someone with the condition are more likely to develop it; the chance of a sibling or child of someone with MS also developing it is estimated to be around 2 to 3 in 100.
With MS, when you don't stay with your treatment, there's the chance that the disease will continue unchecked. That means your immune system can go on causing inflammation and damage in your central nervous system. And “time is brain”: If there's damage, it can be permanent -- you may not get that function back.
But if you have benign MS, you might have some of the following symptoms, even though you can walk and most of your body still works well: Tiredness. Muscle spasms. Vision problems.
Some conditions that doctors may commonly misdiagnose as MS include migraine, RIS, spondylopathy, and neuropathy. To accurately diagnose MS, doctors must rule out conditions with similar symptoms and look for signs and symptoms specific to MS. As such, the process of diagnosing MS may be lengthy and complex.
Some people with MS feel that they developed MS as a direct result of some stressful event or trauma. The evidence on this connection is mixed. Some studies do see an effect whilst others don't.
Heavy Legs & Multiple Sclerosis
The weakness can make your legs feel heavy, as if they are being weighed down by something. They may also ache and hurt. Some people with MS describe it as like having bags of sand attached to their legs. This muscle weakness combined with MS fatigue can be upsetting.
Patients are not born with MS, but rather some environmental factor apparently acts on genetically susceptible individuals to produce the disease; but the nature of that factor (such as whether or not it is a virus) remains elusive.
Your doctor will refer you to a neurologist. They will examine you to check how different parts of your nervous system are working. A combination of tests is used to diagnose MS. The best test is an MRI of your brain and spinal cord to detect areas of damage.
These include fibromyalgia and vitamin B12 deficiency, muscular dystrophy (MD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease), migraine, hypo-thyroidism, hypertension, Beçhets, Arnold-Chiari deformity, and mitochondrial disorders, although your neurologist can usually rule them out quite easily.
Many people with MS may live for 25 to 35 years or longer after their diagnosis. Survival is improving in MS patients, but chronic medical conditions such as heart disease, lung disease, depression, or diabetes may lower life expectancy in MS.
Cognitive changes: The most common cognitive changes related to MS tend to be things like slowed processing (when you need to read things a few times to let them sink in), difficulty finding words, loss of short-term memory, and multitasking problems.
While the genetics governing MS risk are still not completely understood, some 200 genes are thought to possibly contribute — even in small ways — to MS development. The strongest genetic risk factor is a particular variant of the HLA-DRB1 gene, called HLA-DRB1*15:01.
We do not know for certain what causes multiple sclerosis. Scientists believe that a combination of factors trigger the disease. Studies support the opinion that MS is caused when people with the right combination of genes are exposed to some trigger in the environment.