Multiple sclerosis (SEP) touches 120,000 people in France and each year, 4,000 to 6,000 new cases are diagnosed. This autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system is also main cause of severe handicap in adults the youngest (excluding accidents).
“Dysfunction of the immune system causes lesions that cause motor, sensitive, cognitive, visual or even sphincter disturbances (most often urinary and intestinal), explains Inserm, the National Institute of Health and Medical Research. In more or less long term, these disorders can progress towards an irreversible handicap. ”
THE Symptoms of the disease are not always easy to spot, especially in the first years of its evolution. Especially since they are not always specific, that is to say that they can make one think of other pathologies, and that specifies the INSERM, the “disease [est] extremely heterogeneous from one patient to another”.
Multiple sclerosis: non -specific and heterogeneous signs from one patient to another
Among the most commonly reported symptoms at the time of diagnosis, Health Insurance List motor skills and balance disorders (Muscle weakness; Limitation of walking, abnormal movement, partial paralysis of a member, loss of balance, dizziness, etc.) and sensitivity disorders (numbness, tingling or tingling, electrical pain and discharges, abnormal sensations of runoff, vice, hot, cold, loss of sensitivity, etc.).
In a quarter of the cases, these are Visual disorders that alert : “The rapid occurrence, in a few hours or days, of visual discomfort, a double vision or a decrease in visual acuity with an eye due to an ocular neuritis (damage of the optic nerve)”May be crucial indications, still specifies health insurance.
Finally, in rarer cases, patients report Psychic and cognitive symptoms (Memory losses, attention or mood disorders …) but also digestive, urinary and sexual. But often the disease is already advanced. However, the treatments currently available, which aim to slow the progression of multiple sclerosis, are all the more effective that they are administered as soon as possible. Knowing precursor signs, like those dislocated by this new study, therefore opens the way to a good better stabilization of the disease.
Psy disorders and anxiety: these two health problems declare themselves for years before the signs of the sep
What is the health care to which patients are used during of the 25 years preceding the appearance of clinical signs multiple sclerosis? This is the question posed by Vancouver researchers in Canada whose work was published on August 1 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). And the results are instructive.
“All of our results suggest that MS could start earlier than we thought”Note the authors. In particular because they observed“A sustained increase in medical consultations all causes, starting 14 years before the appearance of sep symptoms”.
It was already known that during the 5 to 10 years preceding the appearance of the disease, people with MP more frequently consulted for headache, fatigue, sleep disorders, pain, gastrointestinal and neuropsychiatric problems. It was unclear that signs could be visible earlier.
Consultations in the increased psychiatrist by 159 %
This peak of consultations almost 15 years before clinical signs correspond to mental and psychiatric health issues: + 159 % consultation with the psychiatrist and + 76 % consultation with the general practitioner around mental health (with less defined symptoms that may include anxiety and fatigue for example). “” “The early increase in psychiatric visits may indicate the first stages of immune dysregulation linked to MS, characterized by high pro-inflammatory cytokines and a dysfunction of the blood-brain barrier, which can disrupt the neuro circuits regulating mood mood”, Specify the authors. Comparedly, the number of consultations in the neurologist only increase in the 4 to 9 years before the appearance of the symptoms of the multiple sclerosis.
