New MS Research

This month in Lancet Neurology, a Canadian research team reports there is a pre-clinical phase in MS. The study used health administration records from four Canadian provinces (British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia). Due to the nature of the Canadian health-care system, these provinces have computerized health-care records on >99% of

residents, including hospital discharges, physician billing, prescription on records, and dates of all medical visits – all records can be linked by a unique health-care number assigned to individuals. Using these records, medical histories for 14,428 MS cases and 72,059 controls were included for this study. They compared health-care utilization in the same five years

period prior MS diagnosis between cases and temporally matched controls.

Interestingly, five years before a MS diagnosis, the number of hospital admissions for people who eventually developed MS was 26% higher than controls, and this increased to 78% higher a year before MS diagnosis. A similar pa*ern was observed for physician billing (5 years before diagnosis:

24% higher in people with MS than controls; 1 year before diagnosis: 88%

higher in people with MS than controls). There was also a substantial increase in the number of prescribed drug classes in people with MS compared to controls (5 years before diagnosis: 23% higher; 1 year

before diagnosis: 49%  higher). These results clearly demonstrate a pre-clinical stage for MS where subtle symptoms exist before clinically definitive symptoms (also known as a prodromal stage). With further research, we can explore these subtle symptoms and hopefully diagnose MS earlier and initiate therapeutics earlier, slowing the rate of progression of MS.

From: When do MS symptoms start? By Farren Briggs PhD, ScM; The Accelerated Care Project for Multiple Sclerosis