 |
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease of the Central Nervous System
(CNS), which is comprised of the brain and spinal cord. It
usually affects young and middle aged adults, and it causes
transient (fleeting) or later permanent neurological symptoms
like numbness, tingling, weakness or clumsiness, problems with
vision, balance, walking, memory, etc. MS affects over
400,000 people in the United States and more than two million
individuals worldwide. The disorder occurs twice as often
in women as in men. The cause is not known, but there
are several therapies that can slow down the progression of
the disease.
Patients may have the disease a long-time before they develop
neurological symptoms and seek medical attention. In fact,
there are some patients who have had MRIs of the brain for other
reasons (e.g., due to a car accident), and doctors found that
they had inflammatory lesions of the brain typical of MS, yet
the patient had no neurological problems. This is called pre-clinical
disease stage. This “clinically silent” period
of MS varies from patient to patient and may last from several
weeks to perhaps even decades.
|