Newly Diagnosed
About MS
Multiple sclerosis is a disease that affects your brain and spinal cord. It can help to think of your brain and spinal cord as the communications centre of your body. Nerve fibres from your brain transmit electrical impulses throughout your body sending messages to and from your brain about everything you see and feel and do. For example, when you put your hand on something cold nerves in your fingers will send messages to your brain registering that what you feel is cold. If it’s painful messages back from your brain will tell you to move your hand. These nerves also control things that you’re not aware of, such as breathing and thinking.
Multiple sclerosis literally means lots of scars. In MS, your immune system mistakes nerve fibres for something harmful and attacks them. The coating that insulates nerve fibres, called myelin, gets damaged and becomes inflamed and scarred. Normally myelin allows electrical signals to travel quickly along the nerve fibres. But when myelin is damaged and scarred electrical signals are slowed down or disrupted, or they might be lost altogether (ref nd5). This leads to the symptoms of MS. For example, if the nerve fibres that control movement in the legs are damaged, you may feel shaky when you stand up or have problems walking.
What causes MS?
One of the questions many people ask when they find out they have MS is why me? And, could I have done anything to prevent it? Unfortunately no-one knows what causes MS, or why some people have it and others don’t. There’s nothing you could have done to prevent MS.
There are some things that are known about MS. One thing is that MS can run in families. This suggests that genetic factors contribute to your risk of getting MS. If for example, you have a brother, sister or a parent with MS, your risk of getting the disease is about 20 times greater than someone who does not have MS in their family (ref nd5). But genetic make up is not the only factor that seems to be important for determining your likelihood of getting MS.
Where you live also seems to be a factor. Research has shown that MS is more common in countries that are further from the equator (ref nd6). So a person who lives in Scotland or Iceland is more likely to get MS than someone living in India or Mexico.
Scientists are trying to find out more about the cause of MS. They hope this will help them understand the disease better and lead to new treatments and perhaps a cure.