Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurological condition which affects around 100,000 people in the UK.
Most people are diagnosed between the ages of 20-40, but it can affect younger and older people too.
Roughly three times as many women have MS as men.
a condition of the central nervous system
the coating around nerve fibres (called myelin) is damaged, causing a range of symptoms.
once diagnosed MS stays with you for life
Treatments and specialists can help to manage the condition and its symptoms
The cause is unknown and a cure is yet to be found but research is progressing fast
To understand what happens in MS, it’s useful to understand how the central nervous system works.
A substance called myelin protects the nerve fibres in the central nervous system, which helps messages travel quickly and smoothly between the brain and the rest of the body.
In MS, your immune system, which normally helps to fight off infections, mistakes myelin for a foreign body and attacks it. This damages the myelin and strips it off the nerve fibres, either partially or completely, leaving scars known as lesions or plaques.
This damage disrupts messages travelling along nerve fibres – they can slow down, become distorted, or not get through at all.
As well as myelin loss, there can also sometimes be damage to the actual nerve fibres. It is this nerve damage that causes the increase in disability that can occur over time.
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