The good news about multiple sclerosis these days is that researchers and doctors have found better ways to diagnose and treat it.
There also is great news.
“A major advance in the past decade is that the life expectancy of people with MS is closing in on being nearly that of their healthy counterparts, and significant improvement in early treatment decisions have improved quality of life for patients,” said Dr. Bianca Weinstock-Guttman, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Neurology at the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
Continued challenges with the harmful effects of the chronic, progressive condition temper that optimism, however, said Weinstock-Guttman, lead author of the latest global update on multiple sclerosis, published this month in the medical journal Lancet.
“We still do not know the cause of MS, but it’s clearly multifactorial,” she told The Buffalo News.
Weinstock-Guttman, head of the Jacobs Multiple Sclerosis Center for Treatment and Research on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, and fellow UB researchers are key members of research consortiums around the world that study multiple sclerosis and confidentially share information about patient treatments and outcomes.
UB researchers put together the latest 20-page Lancet Seminar MS report with fellow specialists in Germany and Canada – all of whom work in northern latitudes where MS is more common.
The seminar series provides periodic updates on major diseases to help primary care and other health care providers better understand the latest developments in diagnostics, treatment standards and long-term prognosis. The multiple sclerosis report looked back five years.
About 3 million people worldwide have MS, the most common cause of disability – save traumatic injury – among young adults.
The neurological condition forms when the immune system attacks sheaths that protect nerve fibers in the brain, spinal cord and optic…
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