September 15, 2008

Here's more evidence that loss of gray matter is a significant factor in MS disability: the reason why some people have a benign course of MS may be because they have fewer lesions in their cerebral cortex. This finding comes from an Italian MRI study which compared 48 people with benign MS to 96 with early relapsing-remitting MS. The benign group had EDSS of 3.0 or less and disease duration of 15 years or more; the early RRMS group also had EDSS of 3.0 or less but a disease duration of 5 years or less. All were imaged with a new type of MRI called double inversion recovery (DIR) that can show cortical lesions.

Not only did the benign group have fewer cortical lesions and lower cortical lesion volume at the beginning of the study, but a year later only 8% had new cortical lesions compared with 40% of the early RRMS group. White matter lesion volume, on the other hand, was higher in the benign group both at the beginning of the study and at the follow-up.

A small country is the first to do a whole country prevalence study of MS. While the numbers varied by region, we see that magic "1 in a 1,000" approximate number popping up yet again. While it seems that MS is so much more prevalent, every study that actually goes and counts MS patients ends up being in that vicinity.

Kudos to NZ for actually going and doing this. Wouldn't it be nice if the US, or even one state would do this?