Chris,

You are right in saying that lesions may or may not cause problems based on location but having only a couple of lesions in a more critical area of the brain can cause far more problems for the patient than having several in another area. A number of years ago they also found that by testing control patients, in this case university students, they discovered that lesions can come a go on a random basis without causing any problems at all.

What I'm saying is that MS patients have to look at more than just how many lesions appear on their MRI's to determine how they are doing with their MS. A patient with just a couple of lesions can really be struggling with many symptoms while another with several lesions on the MRI can be symptom free and feel "fine".

The most accurate measurement of how the patient is doing is to look at the symptoms. While "feeling fine" can be subjective, I can say that a MS patient who is really struggling with a lot of symptoms is feeling anything but "fine".

Harry