French researchers have discovered that signs, some of which are banal, could announce multiple sclerosis 5 years before diagnosis.
Touching 120,000 people in France and the majority of womenmultiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurological and autoimmune disease of the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord). It’s a “young adult” diseasediagnosed most often between 25 and 35 years old. The symptoms are varied and often invisible such as very severe fatigue, concentration and memory problems, walking problems… But recently, researchers from the Brain Institute published a study in the journal Neurology in which they demonstrated several biological mechanisms that can appear up to 5 years before MS is diagnosed.
113 symptoms analyzed
For this research, scientists compared health data from 20,174 patients with multiple sclerosis54,790 patients without multiple sclerosis and 37,814 patients affected by two autoimmune diseases which, like MS, mainly affect women and young adults (30,477 patients with Crohn’s disease and 7337 with lupus). They then analyzed the frequency of 113 common symptoms and illnesses over a period of 5 years before to 5 years after diagnosis. Result : 5 symptoms were significantly associated to a subsequent diagnosis of multiple sclerosis:
- The Depression
- Sexual disorders: “In their study, the researchers used anonymized medical records, in which symptoms are represented by a generic “disease code”, and not by a precise clinical description (to preserve anonymity, precisely). “Sexual disorders” can therefore a priori concern any discomfort, pain or loss of sexual function which poses a problem in the lives of patients, and which they have declared to their doctor“, the press service tells us.
- The constipation
- Cystitis
- Other urinary tract infections.
“These signs are probably linked to damage to the nervous system”
We can “affirm that these are warning clinical signsprobably related to damage to the nervous system, in patients who will later be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis […] The over-representation of these symptoms persisted and increased during five years after diagnosis“, explains Prof. Céline Louapre (Sorbonne University, AP-HP), neurologist at Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital and head of the clinical investigation center of the Brain Institute.
Symptoms found in other diseases
However, these 5 symptoms also appeared in the prodromal phase (period during which the disease sets in discreetly) lupus and Crohn’s disease : they are therefore not specific to MS. And most importantly, they are extremely common in healthy people. “By themselves, these signs will not be enough to make an early diagnosis ; but they will certainly help us to better understand the mechanisms of multiple sclerosis. Finally, these new data reinforce our idea that the disease begins well before the appearance of classic neurological symptoms.“, continues the researcher. In people at risk (in the case of a familial form of MS), these signs could help researchers point out the exact moment when the inflammatory process begins at the origin of lesions in the central nervous system and perhaps to implement earlier therapy. Especially since the management of MS has improved considerably over the last 10 years. Unfortunately, there is no cure yet, strictly speaking. nor a therapeutic solution for the 15% of patients suffering from a progressive form of the disease.