World Multiple Sclerosis Day: What are the first symptoms that can make us suspicious?

The Multiple sclerosis is a . It occurs when our own immune system begins to malfunction and attacks the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord), causing permanent neurological damage.

The Spanish Society of Neurology (SEN) estimates that approximately between 50,000 and 55,000 people, of which about 2,000 new cases are diagnosed each year.

70% of new cases occur in people between the ages of 20 and 40although it can debut at any age.

But one of the particularities of this pathology is that (from 20 to 40 years) becoming the main cause of non-traumatic disability most common at this age, according to experts in neurology.

In addition, it is women who end up worse off because multiple sclerosis is between 2 and 3 times more frequent among them.

World Multiple Sclerosis Day: the leading cause of disability among young people between the ages of 20 and 40

A high personal impact

As he says doctor Miguel Angel LlanezaCoordinator of of the Spanish Society of Neurology:

• “Multiple sclerosis It is a disease with a high personal, social and health impact. due to its frequency, its tendency to produce disability, its labor repercussion and due to the care and treatment needs that it entails».

• «At least 50% of patients have a considerable impact on their quality of life and 80% of the socioeconomic cost of this disease (more than 9,000 million euros per year in Europe) is precisely related to these different degrees of disability caused by the disease”.

And although there is still a long way to go in understanding multiple sclerosis, things have changed a lot and for the better for patients.

As the specialist says:

• “Fortunately In the last 25 years, numerous treatments have been approved that have increased life expectancy of patients until it almost resembles that of the rest of the population, in addition to improving their quality of life thanks to the ability of these drugs to modify the natural evolutionary course of the disease and the accumulation of disability”.

Multiple sclerosis affects more than 50,000 people in Spain

types of multiple sclerosis

In 90% of cases, multiple sclerosis produces episodes of neurological dysfunction called flare-ups.. They can last from days to weeks, and sometimes they completely remit, but on other occasions their disappearance is only partial.

Multiple sclerosis has different ways of manifesting itself:

• «Those patients who have an outbreak, an attack, a acute crisis, and then recovereither partially or totally. Then they spend time without symptoms until another crisis breaks out again, and so on.

• The other group are progressive formsamong which two are distinguished:

• multiple sclerosis progressive primarythat in which from the beginning of the disease there are no outbreaks, but rather the patient progressively worsens.

• The progressive secondaries, which are the evolution of the forms in outbreaks, that is, over time the number of outbreaks tends to decrease until they disappear, but there begins to be a progressive worsening.

In addition, around 10% of those affected suffer from primarily progressive forms, in which neurological deterioration increases from the beginning of the disease without the patient suffering flare-ups.

are precisely these patients with progressive forms have the most limited treatments available and their effectiveness, although several therapeutic options have recently been approved that seem to provide some discrete benefits in the evolution of the primary progressive and secondary progressive forms.

• “That’s why it’s so important. since the early and appropriate use of available therapeutic resources is an essential factor to improve the prognosis of patients. At the moment in Spain there is a delay in diagnosis of one to two yearsso there is still room for improvement,” says Llaneza.

World Multiple Sclerosis Day: the leading cause of disability among young people between the ages of 20 and 40

Symptoms

As a consequence of this neurological deterioration, patients can develop numerous symptoms depending on the area of ​​the central nervous system that has been affected.

The most common early symptoms are:

• Muscular weakness.

• Blurry vision.

• Double vision.

• Unsteadiness and difficulty maintaining balance.

• Vertigo.

• Tingling in extremities.

When the disease has advanced, they appear new symptomsthe most common are:

• Muscular stiffness.

• Muscle spasms and cramps.

• Fatigue, a very common symptom among these patients and which causes very significant losses in their quality of life.

• Disorders in the urinary and fecal sphincters.

In addition, approximately 50% of patients with multiple sclerosis develop cognitive impairment in the form of impaired memory, attention span and information processing, which has a direct impact on their professional field.

These patients also are more at risk of developing psychiatric comorbidities, or other diseases such as stroke or epilepsywhich can increase the rate of relapses and increase the disability they develop.

All these complications make More than 25% of multiple sclerosis patients have to be admitted to the hospital each year for some of these reasons.

Neuroscience seeks a remedy for Multiple Sclerosis Aceofhearts1968’s illustrations

Covid-19 and multiple sclerosis

Although in the years of the pandemic it was not observed that the majority of patients with multiple sclerosis They had a higher risk of infection by COVID-19, nor that this disease produced a worse evolution in case of infection, the pandemic did affect, and greatly, the quality of life of these patients.

So much so that in the previous one that took place in December 2021, several studies were presented that indicated that almost 50% of patients with multiple sclerosis affirmed…