Multiple sclerosis is a disease of the central nervous system that
affects the nerves and causes a lot of vision, balance and control
problems. People that have passed half of their lives are usually more
at risk of suffering from multiple sclerosis.
Multiple sclerosis makes the body attack it's own nerves, the membrane
that protects them to be more precise. This membrane, called myelin
sheaths is attacked by white blood cells and antibodies, which should
normally attack bacteria and viruses that threaten to cause an
infection in the body, or diseased cells that don't do what they are
suppose to anymore. For some unknown reason they attack the healthy
nerve-protecting cells. When the myelin steath is under attack the
nerves can't send the normal signals to the nervous system and the
sense in cause is seriously damaged.
Multiple sclerosis has a large variety of symptoms that vary from what
patient to another and that depend on which nerve endings are attacked
and do not function properly anymore. Among the most common symptoms
you can find: tremor, partial or total temporary loss of vision,
strength loss and weakness, confusion, head aches, memory loss and
balance loss.
Diagnosis of multiple sclerosis is not easy. It is based on the
patient's medical history and a series of tests are also required.
First of all the patient must take some blood tests that scan for other
diseases in order to determine if the symptoms are caused by other
illnesses.
Then MRI testing is performed. MRI can give us detailed images of the
brain and the other parts of the nervous system so we can determine
whether something is wrong or not. During the MRI tests a very strong
magnet scans the brain and the spine, and images with certain patterns
on it will result. The doctors will determine if the patterns are
normal or not. MRI can detect lesions that are specific only to
sclerosis.
And finally, sometimes evoked potential tests are done. The evoked
potentials are the electric impulses that the central nervous system
sends to the nerves as a feedback to the information they send about
the environment. When a person suffers from multiple sclerosis these
impulses are slowed very much by a substance that appears in the case
of a multiple sclerosis. The test try to measure the speed of the
impulses and compare it to the normal speed.
Elaborate tests need to be done to diagnose sclerosis because it is
often confused with other diseases with similar symptoms like
osteoarthritis and epilepsy.
After the diagnosis is done the treament must begin. There is no know
cure for multiple sclerosis so the only things we can do is to try to
stop the attacks when they occur. A lot of reasearch is done in order
to ease the diagnosis process and to the multiple sclerosis causes.
