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What Happens when Someone gets MS?
Our nervous system controls everything we do through a highly complex network of nerve cells and interconnecting fibres that run through the body. The disease process in MS can result in structural damage to the nerve cell, to the myelin sheath surrounding the fibres and to the central core which transmits the signals to and from the brain.
When such damage is present, the passage of these signals can be delayed, partially or completely blocked by the very scars which, in other parts of the body, are the mark of healing.
There are preferred sites such as the eye nerves, areas around the ventricles (cavities) of the brain and the spinal cord at mid-neck level. The areas of damage always develop around small veins and are associated with the leakage of proteins and even red blood cells into the nerve tissue. This causes inflammation and swelling.
There is no evidence whatever of infection in MS - despite samples of brain tissue having been taken from living patients during an attack in an attempt to culture a virus
The cells most vulnerable to damage are not the actual nerve cells but those, called oligodendrocytes, which form the myelin sheaths. In recent years, most of the research into MS has been upon the immune system and it has been suggested that there may be links to viruses. But there is no evidence whatever of infection in MS - despite samples of brain tissue having been taken from living patients during an attack in an attempt to culture a virus. So MS is definitely NOT infectious. The immune changes are seen in many different diseases of the nervous system and hence are secondary features.
Although it is frequently stated that the cause or causes of MS have not been clearly identified, some distinctly similar conditions can be noted. For example, divers can develop a form of disease with pathology similar to MS, where the damage in the nervous system is due to leakage from small veins. In divers, this leakage is formed by gas bubbles in the circulation formed during decompression (air embolism). Similarly a natural disease process can occur due to particles of fatty tissue entering the circulation. This is called 'fat embolism' and can occur in a variety of conditions causing tissue damage, e.g. with fractures.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging has shown that the initial damage in MS is often ’silent’, that is without the production of symptoms. The presence of the damage may then be unmasked by a problem or problems totally unrelated to the cause of the disease. For example, most patients have discovered that heat can make them worse (and American neurologists have provoked symptoms with the 'hot bath test' since 1937), but this does not mean that hot baths cause MS! They just exacerbate the existing problems. Various other things can provoke attacks especially, for example, bladder infections.
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