All About Multiple Sclerosis

What is it?

It has been scientifically determined that multiple sclerosis can potentially debilitate a person. This means that the body’s own immune system attacks the sheath that protects the nerves. Once this sheath is damaged or totally destroyed, the normal communication between the person’s brain and the rest of the body is interfered. This condition results into the deteriorating of the nerves, a complication that can never be reversed.

Its symptoms

The symptoms of multiple sclerosis may vary depending on how much damage has occurred to the nerves that are affected. Those who have the severe type of multiple sclerosis can end up being bedridden since their ability to walk or to talk is destroyed.

What is very bothersome about these symptoms is that they tend to come and go. This means that they could suddenly arrive and then suddenly disappear for a few months. This is why doctors find it initially difficult to diagnose multiple sclerosis during its early stages.

Multiple sclerosis symptoms are also usually manifested by people between the ages of twenty and forty. Although multiple sclerosis can happen to anyone from any age, this is the common age range that is affected. Also, according to statistical research, the women are the ones who usually carry this debilitating disorder.

There is numbness or fatigue in one limb or both. This kind of weakness usually occurs on just one side of the body at a single time. However, there have been reports that it could happen to the entire bottom part of the body. This condition is often accompanied with a tingling sensation that is sometimes painful in some parts of the body.

There is also a partial or a complete visual loss which starts at one time then ends with having pain whenever both eyes move. This condition is given the medical term of optic neuritis. Apart from loss of vision, double vision or blurring of vision can also occur.

There could also be sensations like electrical shock that occur whenever the head is moved. Tremors also happen with the accompaniment of absence of coordination and imbalanced gait.

Many who have multiple sclerosis might experience relapses of the symptoms, especially during the early stages of the disorder. This relapsing phase is often followed by partial or complete remission.

Its causes

As minimally mentioned, multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease. This means that the body’s immune system attacks its own cells and tissues. The myelin, which is a protective wall that insulates the nerve fibers within, is damaged in multiple sclerosis. Once it is damaged, foreign substances that are potentially harmful can then freely destroy the open and unprotected nerve fibers.

Multiple sclerosis can happen to anyone from any age. However, it has been discovered that it usually occurs to people who are between twenty and forty years of age. As mentioned, women are also the ones who usually carry such disease. In fact, women are twice more likely to have multiple sclerosis than men.

As any other condition, heredity plays an important role. The risk of developing multiple sclerosis is greater for those who have a family history of the disease than for those who do not. If one of the parents has the disease, then there is a one to three percent possibility that multiple sclerosis may develop.

When it comes to identical twins, things are much more complicated and difficult to ascertain. Identical twins would mean having identical risks, according to some medical scientists. However, this is not the case because a twin who has multiple sclerosis only gives his or her identical twin a thirty percent possibility of having the very same disorder.

The Kurtzke Expanded Disability Status Scale And Multiple Sclerosis

What is this scale?

The Kurtzke Expanded Disability Status Scale, otherwise known as the EDSS, is a famous way of quantifying how much is already disabled in a person with multiple sclerosis. This tool replaced the Disability Status Scales which did as much as grouping people with multiple sclerosis.

The Kurtzke EDSS enumerates the disabilities associated with MS or multiple sclerosis according to the established eight functional systems. This then allows many neurologists to allocate a specific functional system score in each. The functional systems are as follows: pyramidal, cerebellar, brainstem, sensory, bowel and bladder, visual, cerebral, and others.

The Kurtzke EDSS gives two distinctive classifications to two different types of damage due to multiple sclerosis, depending on the severity of the disease’s symptoms. For instance, grades 1.0 up to 4.5 mean people who have multiple sclerosis but are fully ambulatory. On the other hand, those who are graded 5.0 up to 9.5 are those who are impaired in their ambulation.

Its discovery

Dr. Kurtzke established this useful scale back in August of 1955. The scale he discovered was initially called the DSS, which evaluated the impairment associated with MS based on a ten-point scale. And then it was in 1983 that Dr. Kurtzke discovered the EDSS. This latest tool became more famous and much more useful because it could evaluate MS-related impairment in all of the main neurological areas.

Even though the EDSS is not so sensitive when it comes to assessing temporary changes in the person’s level of consciousness, this tool is immensely utilized for not just national but also international tests in evaluating just how effective a certain therapy can be.

The EDSS is predominantly built for assessing the person’s ambulation and not cognition, fatigue or the functioning of the upper extremities.

Its FS Scale

The FS scale or the functional systems scale is important to the EDSS since it assesses and evaluates the seven parts of the central nervous system which have the ability to control the normal functioning of the body. For instance, those who can function normally are graded 0 while those who are unable to finish the assignment are given the grade of 6.

The FS scale of the EDSS is important for those people with multiple sclerosis but can still ambulate since it evaluates where a certain person may have some disability or difficulty.

According to many research findings, the Kurtzke EDSS and a certain scale for the ADL's or activities of daily living have a symbiotic relationship towards one another. Together, these two scales are able to assess the amount of disability that occurs in multiple domains of functioning, all depending on the person’s subjective report of any of the symptoms of multiple sclerosis.

Although the EDSS is the standard way of finally assessing the amount of disability and impairment, it is still greatly criticized for the putting far too much focus on the use of the lower extremities or the legs and not much attention to the general clinical change.

What are used?

In evaluating the disease status, MRI scans are used by the physicians. However, such diagnostic test is not so correlational with the outcome of the disease, since in multiple sclerosis, majority of the lesions are not seen via the MRI scan. Some even do not have symptoms that can be clinically detected.