Overview
Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is an often debilitating and progressive autoimmune disease, which causes damage to the myelin sheath covering the axons of the central nervous system (CNS). Myelin acts to insulate these nerve fibres, both speeding up nervous transduction and ensuring nervous impulses are non- decremented by increasing the electrical resistance across the cell membrane.
Demyelinating diseases, such as MS, lead to scarring in the myelin and patches of un-encapsulated nerves. This scarring presents itself in a large array of signs and symptoms for the sufferer. Waves of electrical depolarisation, known as action potentials, usually spread down nervous pathways of myelinated axons quickly and flawlessly allowing the brain to communicate with the spinal cord and different areas of the body. If process is compromised, through the loss of myelin, sufferers often have more difficultly coordinating movements and impaired cognitive ability. The disease itself, first described by Jean Martin Charcot in 1868, remains without a cure but many different drugs and treatments have been developed in an attempt to lessen the frequency of episodic attacks which are often a trademark of the disease. The condition’s causes are equally mysterious though thought to have both genetic and environmental influences.
Ultimately, the implications of having multiple sclerosis are varied relating very much to the individual and the disease subtype (see Diagnosis); the progressive forms can be very debilitating with extensive permanent plaques forming in the CNS. For others, with relapsing-remitting MS, symptoms can completely subside and new pharmaceuticals will sought to lengthen these steady periods.