AGE AND MS ARE IMPORTANT

Timothy L. Vollmer, MD

Professor, Department of Neurology 

University of Colorado Health 

Sciences Center

Co-Director of the RMMSC at

Anschutz Medical Center

Medical Director

Rocky Mountain MS Center

"This is a very important point. We typically think of MS as a disease of young adults that then runs its course over the rest of their lifetime. But in fact they can occur at any age. We have seen children as young as a year and a half of age develop multiple sclerosis and I've also seen individuals that in their 70's they have their first presentation of multiple sclerosis."

The unfortunate thing is that in the children form of the disease it has been missed or misdiagnosed, frequently, over the past century in part because of technical issues, but also in part because there was a reluctance on the part of the medical community to label a child with a disease that, up until recently, was considered almost certainly associated with high levels of disability. 

Now, though, because we have therapies available it's very important for us to pick up children very early in the disease course because we can treat them and we're getting better at really preventing them from developing significant disability."