Multiple sclerosis how fast

Spinal tap lumbar puncture. Your healthcare provider removes a sample of spinal fluid to check for signs of MS. Visual evoked potentials VEP. This test is done to see how well your optic nerves are working. After the general diagnosis of MS, the diagnosis of PPMS is based almost exclusively on the patient's symptom history. Because of this, it may take time for the PPMS diagnosis to be made. Several medicines are available to treat relapsing forms of MS.

Your healthcare provider may still be able to use 1 of these medicines in your case. But more likely your healthcare provider will try to provide treatments that relieve symptoms and improve your quality of life. These may address problems such as depression, sexual problems, and extreme tiredness fatigue. Some people limit MS relapses by avoiding specific triggers such as stress and overheating. Physical and occupational therapy may be helpful.

Someone with relapsing remitting MS will have episodes of new or worsening symptoms, known as relapses. These typically worsen over a few days, last for days to weeks to months, then slowly improve over a similar time period. Relapses often occur without warning, but are sometimes associated with a period of illness or stress.

The symptoms of a relapse may disappear altogether, with or without treatment, although some symptoms often persist, with repeated attacks happening over several years. Periods between attacks are known as periods of remission. These can last for years at a time. After many years usually decades , many, but not all, people with relapsing remitting MS go on to develop secondary progressive MS.

In this type of MS, symptoms gradually worsen over time without obvious attacks. Some people continue to have infrequent relapses during this stage. Around half of people with relapsing remitting MS will develop secondary progressive MS within 15 to 20 years, and the risk of this happening increases the longer you have the condition.

Just over 1 in 10 people with the condition start their MS with a gradual worsening of symptoms. In primary progressive MS, symptoms gradually worsen and accumulate over several years, and there are no periods of remission, though people often have periods where their condition appears to stabilise.

Approximately 15 percent of people are diagnosed with a relatively uncommon form of the disease, called primary-progressive MS. This form is characterized by slow and steady disease progression with no remission periods. Some people with primary-progressive MS experience occasional plateaus in their symptoms as well as minor improvements in function that tend to be temporary.

There are variations in the progression rate over time. The first stage to consider occurs before your doctor has made a diagnosis of MS. Genetic and environmental factors are thought to play a role in who gets MS. In general, MS becomes more severe over time. Everyone with MS will experience their own timeline. For others, symptoms may become severe. Talk to your doctor about your symptoms so that they can come up with a treatment plan specific to you. The next step on the continuum is receiving a diagnosis of MS.

Often it can take time to make this diagnosis because other conditions must first be ruled out. In addition to adults, children and adolescents can be diagnosed with MS. The NMSS reports that between 2 and 5 percent of all MS patients noticed symptoms that started before they were 18 years old.

Contact Us. Start Here. Subscribe to receive emails from the National MS Society including research news, health and wellness tips, invitations to local programs, events, fundraising and more. Often these individuals have had an MRI because of other symptoms, such as headache, and were found to have lesions that appear similar to those seen in MS.

There are no specific treatment guidelines for RIS and additional research is needed to further define what factors increase the likelihood that someone with RIS will develop MS. Monitoring of MRI and neurological symptoms, and neurological examination are generally recommended to quickly identify changes.

If the diagnosis is MS, treatment can be started early. Research interest in RIS is high and several studies are ongoing , which could provide more guidance for monitoring and treatment. CIS is a first episode of neurologic symptoms caused by inflammation and demyelination in the central nervous system. The episode, which by definition must last for at least 24 hours, is characteristic of multiple sclerosis but does not yet meet the criteria for a diagnosis of MS because people who experience a CIS may or may not go on to develop MS.

When CIS is accompanied by lesions on a brain MRI magnetic resonance imaging that are similar to those seen in MS, the person has a high likelihood of a second episode of neurologic symptoms and diagnosis of relapsing-remitting MS.