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Thursday, June 21, 2007
Tracing MS From Childhood to Adulthood
A new study out is finding that childhood MS takes longer to develop disability in walking by 10 years over average aged (32) adult diagnosed MS. Very interesting. It'd be great if they could figure out why though! "When MS started in childhood, it took about 10 years longer to worsen to the point at which patients had trouble walking, the study shows. But childhood cases began nearly 20 years earlier than adult-onset cases. So even with the decade of delay in worsening symptoms, patients with childhood-onset MS were younger than adult patients when walking became difficult. "Patients with childhood-onset multiple sclerosis take longer to reach states of irreversible disability but do so at a younger age than patients with adult-onset multiple sclerosis," write the researchers. It's not clear why childhood-onset MS took longer to worsen to that point than adult-onset MS. About half of the children with MS took drugs that target the immune system, but "none of these drugs has a proven effect on the long-term development of disability," write the researchers."
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