I'm baaaack . . .



I recall reading a few years ago that a large % of our lesions, especially in certain areas of the brain, go undetected. MS also used to be thought of as mostly a WM disease, but there is evidence of it being prevalent in the GM as well.

http://www.ajnr.org/cgi/content/abstract/26/3/572

If . . . in your article, you are referring to a combination of the various disease process factors (eg. Oligondendrocytes, axonal loss, demyelination, etc....) as “lesions” . . . I suppose much of the disease process might not necessarily be visible in our MRIs.

Could the death of oligondendrocytes (from whatever cause) be the “driver” of inflammation, and/or could that possibly be the reason that lesions don’t show up for some amount of time after the damage is done? If axonal damage is an early feature of this disease, even in RRMS, would this process necessarily be visible in a MRI?

Since so much of our disease process is hidden, and we can have relapses without showing active lesions/no relapses while having active lesions . . . I wonder why bother even having MRI’s once we are dx?

If only a few of our “unhidden” lesions show anyway . . . wouldn’t disability (indicating what’s clearly going on behind the MRI scene) be a much stronger indicator of our disease progression?

http://registration.akm.ch/einsicht....NMASKEN_ID=900

Are we even SURE yet, whether relapses are such a bad thing? Could the inflammatory process just be a consequence, and trying to control it like putting a glob of gum in a leaky boat?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16918358

I'll be back . . . Cherie