Next step is to look for commonalities, in hope of earlier diagnoses

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Five years before they are diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, patients with that condition often display symptoms of some sort of medical issue, according to new research from UBC.

By going through the medical records of 14,000 patients with the condition, Dr Helen Tremlett and her team have identified a phase during which many people show signs that something isn’t quite right – even before doctors make a diagnosis of MS.

“People who were now destined to develop MS were more likely to be accessing the health system, meaning they were more likely to be hospitalized or visit a physician or be in a pharmacy filling a prescription for a medication [than the general population],” says Tremlett, whose team compared the medical histories of these 14,000 patients with 72,000 people without the disease.

Tremlett says the next step for her research team is to delve deeper into the data to look for commonalities – perhaps identifying clusters of symptoms that can help doctors diagnose the disease sooner.

“Our study findings tell us that there is potential here to recognize and hopefully diagnose MS earlier, therefore you can extend the window during which people, for instance, could be offered treatment,” she says.

You can read the full study in the journal Lancet Neurology.