Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a disease of the central nervous system that causes damage to your brain, spinal cord, and optic nerves. It's characterized by lesions, or areas of tissue damage that occur when your immune system behaves abnormally and attacks these areas.
As the disease progresses, the outermost layer of the brain, called the cerebral cortex, shrinks in a process known as cortical atrophy. The term multiple sclerosis refers to the distinctive areas of scar tissue (sclerosis—also called plaques or lesions) that result from the attack on myelin by the immune system.
Multiple sclerosis is caused by your immune system mistakenly attacking the brain and nerves. It's not clear why this happens but it may be a combination of genetic and environmental factors.
In multiple sclerosis, the immune system attacks brain and spinal cord nerve coverings (myelin). This disrupts their ability to send signals to the rest of the body.
Disease Course of MS Is Unpredictable
A person with benign MS will have few symptoms or loss of ability after having MS for about 15 years, while most people with MS would be expected to have some degree of disability after that amount of time, particularly if their MS went untreated.
Are There Any Risk Factors for More Severe Cognitive Changes With MS? Severe cognitive impairment that seems like dementia is rare in people with MS, especially if they don't have severe physical problems too. One important risk factor for severe cognitive impairment in MS is smoking.
COGNITIVE ISSUES. These issues include difficulty with memory, concentration, and problem solving, which many people refer to as “cog fog.” Memory loss is the most common mental change in people with multiple sclerosis (MS). It can occur at any time in the course of your MS.
Study results found that NMOSD and MS groups had lower scores of full score IQ (FSIQ), verbal IQ (VIQ), and performance IQ (PIQ) compared to the control group.
Certain functions, including general intellect, long-term (remote) memory, conversational skill and reading comprehension, are not likely to change due to MS. If you experience changes in cognitive function, certain strategies and tools can help you function effectively.
MS is not directly inherited from parent to child. There's no single gene that causes it. Over 200 genes might affect your chances of getting MS.
Some people with MS may have only mild symptoms. Others may lose their ability to see clearly, write, speak, or walk when communication between the brain and other parts of the body becomes disrupted. Myelin is the fatty tissue that surrounds and protects nerve fibers. In MS, the myelin is destroyed in many areas.
MS can cause significant anxiety, distress, anger, and frustration from the moment of its very first symptoms. The uncertainty and unpredictability associated with MS is one of its most distressing aspects. In fact, anxiety is at least as common in MS as depression.
Are multiple sclerosis lesions permanent? MS lesions are dynamic and can change as time goes on. Over time, an individual lesion or area of abnormal tissue may remain the same size, it may grow, or it may shrink or disappear entirely.
The researchers found that over the past 25 years, life expectancy for people with MS has increased. However, they also found that the median age of survival of people with MS was 76 years, versus 83 years for the matched population.
The most common depressive symptoms in MS include irritability, discouragement, memory/concentration problems, fatigue, insomnia and poor appetite. Guilt and poor self-esteem are rarer in these patients [10].
You might experience issues with your memory, attention span, planning, decision making, understanding or concentration. Many people with MS talk about 'brain fog' or 'cog-fog' to refer to a sense that their thinking processes are sometimes not as organised or reliable as they used to be before they had MS.
The study found that people with MS lived to be 75.9 years old, on average, compared to 83.4 years old for those without. That 7.5-year difference is similar to what other researchers have found recently.
People may experience such things as forgetfulness, trouble concentrating, and confusion. Brain fog is also referred to as “brain haze” or “cog fog” — short for cognitive fog. As we know, MS is a disease of the central nervous system that affects the brain and spinal cord.
"People with multiple sclerosis report a lower quality of life when compared to people without the disease, and even those with other chronic conditions," said study author Julia O'Mahony, PhD, of the Health Sciences Centre Winnipeg in Winnipeg, Canada.
Some people have MS and Parkinson's. Research suggests that the damage that MS causes to your brain can lead some people to develop Parkinson's later on. If you have MS, your immune system triggers ongoing inflammation. This can create lesions in your brain that cause Parkinson's disease.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is considered a disease of the young adult, although numerous studies have reported an increasing mean age of the population with MS, and an increasing incidence of the elderly (1, 2).