{"id":51475,"date":"2025-08-07T07:18:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T07:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/51475\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T07:18:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T07:18:12","slug":"ms-could-start-up-to-15-years-earlier-than-thought-new-ubc-research-suggests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/51475\/","title":{"rendered":"MS could start up to 15 years earlier than thought, new UBC research suggests"},"content":{"rendered":"

Could doctors of the future one day spot the signs of multiple sclerosis<\/a> (MS) years earlier than they do now?<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s an intriguing possibility raised by new research from the University of British Columbia, which suggests the disease\u2019s earliest warning signs may materialize up to 15 years before the first classical neurological symptoms do.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is really important,\u201d said senior author and UBC neurology Prof. Dr. Helen Tremlett.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to prevent MS from occurring at all, if you want to know what causes multiple sclerosis \u2026 we need to now make sure that we look much further back in time to avoid thinking that something causes MS when, in actual fact, the disease has already started.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The study, published Tuesday in the journal JAMA Network Open<\/a>, came to its conclusions by analyzing the health records of more than 12,000 British Columbians.<\/p>\n

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Researchers found that patients who developed MS actually began accessing health care at a higher rate than the general population a decade and a half before their classic MS symptoms appeared.<\/p>\n

Researchers looked at doctor visits going 25 years before MS patients\u2019 symptom onset, more than double the range that prior studies have examined.<\/p>\n

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Tremlett said the research suggests the existence of a \u201cprodromal phase\u201d to MS \u2014 a period during which non-specific signs and symptoms occur before the classical onset of disease.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistorically, MS wasn\u2019t thought to have a prodromal phase, which is a shame because other neurological conditions like Parkinson\u2019s, this concept of a prodromal phase they\u2019ve been studying since the 1980s,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can see that before the classical onset of Parkinson\u2019s motor symptoms, maybe a decade or so before, they can pick up this prodromal phase. So I think it\u2019s super exciting that we\u2019re starting to realize this happens in multiple sclerosis as well.\u201c<\/p>\n

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By studying the health records, Tremlett\u2019s team found a steady build-up in contact with the health-care system leading up to patients\u2019 MS diagnosis, with different types of doctor visits increasing at distinct points in time.<\/p>\n

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At 15 years before MS symptoms, they picked up a general increase in doctor\u2019s visits, particularly related to symptoms like fatigue, pain, dizziness and mental health conditions like depression and anxiety.<\/p>\n

At 12 years prior, they found an uptick in visits to a psychiatrist. Eight to nine years prior, visits to ophthalmologists and neurologists increased, potentially pointing to blurry vision or eye pain.<\/p>\n

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Visits to the emergency room and radiology increase three to five years before MS symptom onset.<\/p>\n

And in the year before classic symptoms appeared, doctors\u2019 visits across a slew of specialties picked up, including neurology, emergency medicine and radiology.<\/p>\n

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While that information gives researchers more threads to tug on, Tremlett stressed that these general symptoms cannot be used to diagnose MS, and that most people who experience them have nothing to worry about.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s important for listeners to know that what we\u2019re looking at here is patterns of health-care use in large groups of people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vast majority of people who visit a doctor for the issues I mentioned do not, and will not, develop multiple sclerosis. So I do not want anyone to feel alarmed or concerned by our findings.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, she said the research suggests there is an opportunity in the future to recognize and potentially diagnose MS earlier, potentially through a biological marker in the blood, through family history or other combinations of clues that show someone to be in the disease\u2019s prodromal phase.<\/p>\n

Future research that achieves that goal, she said, could one day allow doctors to prevent or slow the disease\u2019s progression over the long-term.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019m painting here is a picture that could be achievable in the future,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we\u2019re excited and we think that our findings kind of open that door to this new possibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t&copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Could doctors of the future one day spot the signs of multiple sclerosis (MS) years earlier than they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[49,48,84,14165],"class_list":["post-51475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-multiple-sclerosis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}