Every year, 2,000 new cases of MS are diagnosed in Spain, a chronic inflammatory disease of the central nervous system in which immune cells attack myelin (the protective covering that insulates nerve cells), damaging or destroying it and causing inflammation. .
Hormone treatments and smoking have caused an increase in the incidence of multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease that now affects women four times more than men.
So says Celia Oreja Guevara, Head of the MS Unit at Hospital Clínico (Madrid), who is taking part in the 38th ECTRIMS 2022 Congress, which brings together the leading European specialists in this field from October 26 to 28 in Amsterdam.
Orega believes that the increase in the incidence of the disease, especially in women, is due to environmental factors, such as smoking: “They smoke more than before and more than men”, in addition to hormonal treatments, as “it is proven that the patient improves during pregnancy and much worse during menopause”.
Added to these factors are women’s increased workload, lack of exercise and their movement from the countryside to the interior, which leads to vitamin D deficiency, which is a specific cause of MS, along with genetic factors. Epstein-Barr virus or obesity.
The Spanish neurologist participated in a symposium on the relationship between “immune cells and inflammation of the central nervous system” where the treatment “as soon as possible” with clidripine tablets was evaluated to improve the quality of life in people with recurrent multiple sclerosis. After two years of management.
According to data from a phase IV study presented at ECTRIMS 2022 with this drug, brain lesions detected by MRI are also preserved, commented Gavin Giovannoni, Professor of Neuroscience at Queen Mary University of London.
Giovannoni influenced the administration of cliadribine tablets, which facilitate adherence to treatment and reduce the risk of infection by reducing the period of immunosuppression.
In Spain – with 55 thousand people affected by multiple sclerosis – this medicine has been integrated into the National Health System (SNS) since 2018 and is authorized “for all active patients”, explains Oreja, referring that it is a “suspension” treatment of weight”. .Customization is allowed.in patient care.
Every year, 2,000 new cases of MS are diagnosed in Spain, a chronic inflammatory disease of the central nervous system in which immune cells attack myelin (the protective covering that insulates nerve cells), damaging or destroying it and causing inflammation. .
Regarding current therapies, Celia Orega explained that they focus on decreasing and reducing inflammation to improve the quality of life of patients who “20 years ago were all in a wheelchair”, but do not prevent the progression of the disease.
“What needs to be resolved is how to stop this slow progression and repair the lost myelin”, insisted the neurologist, recalling that the prognosis of the disease was increasingly short, which lasted from a year and a half to between two or three months in one decade.
Despite the fact that the symptoms it produces are so diverse – fatigue, balance, difficulty walking, numbness, tingling or dizziness – Oreja reveals that more and more patients are being referred to neurology for primary care or emergency situations.
And she warned: “The only person who doesn’t go to the doctor is the one we don’t diagnose. Many times he feels tingling in just one hand and doesn’t go to the center”.
