Thanks, Cherie, for posting that study and also for your thoughtful comments in this thread. Interesting stuff.

I, too, wonder what happens to these people 10 or 20 years down the line.

These study findings DO explain, I guess, why my neuros both closed the door on me after a one-year followup.

But it doesn't explain why that first guy told me I had MS in the first place!

Also it does not explain why so many doctors feel it necessary to explain the symptoms as anxiety, hypochondriasis, stress, depression, etc. This may be true in some cases, but effectively, what happens is that these latter things BECOME the diagnosis, sometimes with no more evidence of them than there is for MS!

So why can't they just say... "sorry, we can't explain your symptoms, they do not appear to be dangerous, such undiagnosable symptoms are a common occurrence, call us if anything goes badly wrong," end of story? Without piling that psychological **** on patients without evidence of anxiety/stress etc.?

Nancy T.