Natural history of multiple sclerosis: a unifying concept

Multiple sclerosis can follow very different patterns of evolution and variable rates of disability accumulation. This raises the issue whether it represents one or several distinct diseases. We assessed demographic and clinical characteristics in 1844 patients with multiple sclerosis that we categorized according to the classification of Lublin and Reingold (1996) into 1066 (58%) relapsing-remitting, 496 (27%) secondary progressive, 109 (6%) progressive relapsing and 173 (9%) primary progressive cases of multiple sclerosis. Relapsing-remitting and secondary progressive cases shared similar age at disease onset (median = 28.7 versus 29.5 years; P = 0.21), initial symptoms of the relapsing-remitting phase,…

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  Biogen
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  IC Design Education Center