Lynsee Hudson, MD, a board-certified neurologist with Kaiser Permanente Colorado, believes life is meant to be lived to the fullest. It’s a philosophy she shares with all patients, and one especially important for those living with multiple sclerosis (MS).

She’s helping patients understand that being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis does not equate to living life with a progressive, debilitating disease.   

“Multiple sclerosis is not the disease it used to be,” says Dr. Hudson. “We haven’t found a cure for it, but we’re clearly making tremendous gains with how we treat it.”

New treatments help people with MS live symptom-free for longer and reduce the likelihood of developing a permanent disability. Rather than treat only the symptoms of the disease, neurologists can now identify the disease earlier and prescribe medications that decrease progression and disability.

“MRI of the brain allows us to take higher-resolution images to diagnose the disease and determine the amount of disease activity,” Dr. Hudson says. “Other breakthroughs are disease-modifying therapies. We now have seven FDA-approved drugs that treat MS. If used early in the course of the disease, for many patients, they can significantly preserve the body’s functions.”

Defining MS

MS is a chronic autoimmune disease that attacks the central nervous system, including elements of the brain and spinal cord.  It may destroy the nerve’s protective coating, called myelin, and also can cause degeneration of the nerve’s axon — which are the long, thin projections connecting to other nerves.  Overtime, this disrupts the brain and spinal cord communications with the body, ultimately slowing or stopping some functions.

If left unmanaged, MS can impair a person’s strength, sensation, balance, vision, and thinking ability. Although the disease can occur in more aggressive forms, relapsing-remitting is the most common. Here, symptoms such as numbness or tingling in the extremities, double vision, and fatigue, can flare up for a period of days or weeks, and then enter remission.

“The disease itself is defined by a pattern of neurological problems that accumulate over time,” Dr. Hudson explains. “Once a patient is diagnosed, they will have the disease for a lifetime.”

What causes MS?

Many neurologists, including Dr. Hudson, believe environmental and hereditary factors act together to trigger the disease. Several working theories suggest the following could put you at higher risk:

• Gender. Women are twice as likely as men to contract the disease.
• Age. The majority of people with MS are diagnosed between 16 and 45 years of age.
• Genetics. MS is not simply an “inherited” disease, but many genes seem to influence the susceptibility of getting it.
• Geography. Colder, northern regions have a higher incidence of MS. “MS is much more prevalent in states and locations in the northern latitudes,” Dr. Hudson says. “In Colorado, about one in 600 people are living with MS. That’s high, but there’s an even higher incidence in more northern states like Washington and Montana, which supports the theory that an environmental factor is at play in triggering the disease process.”
   

Diagnosing MS therefore requires a neurologist to gather both a clinical history, perform a detailed neurologic exam, and obtain MRI imaging of the central nervous system.

Best course of treatment

Diagnosing the disease in its early stages, followed immediately by medication therapy, is improving the outcome for MS patients. At this point, first-line treatment is often an injectable medication. Follow-up care includes ongoing visits with a neurologist and MRI imaging to detect new lesions on the brain, which can accumulate without noticeable symptoms.

“There continues to be exciting and newly available multiple sclerosis treatments in the pipeline, but we are cautious about these treatments,” says Dr. Hudson. “When used appropriately and early in MS, disease-modifying therapies can preserve the body’s ability to function and offer tremendous hope.”

Read how Dr. Hudson is helping one Colorado woman live a healthy life with MS.

Learn more about multiple sclerosis treatment options at kp.org.