Blacks with MS Deteriorate More Quickly

African Americans who develop multiple sclerosis deteriorate more quickly than their white counterparts and don’t respond as well to the currently available treatments, say researchers.

It’s not unusual for different races to respond in different ways to various illnesses or treatments. The best known illness where this occurs is hypertension (high blood pressure), but we don’t always know which diseases or disorders will fall into this category.

Multiple sclerosis is much more common among whites than African Americans, so not much research had been done regarding any differences in progression and treatment. Researchers from the University of Buffalo began looking into this while examining the magnetic resonance images (MRIs) of 567 patients who had MS. What they found was that African Americans who had MS showed more “damage to brain tissue and had less normal white and gray matter compared to whites with the disease.” (Blacks with MS Have More Severe Symptoms, Decline Faster than Whites, New Study Shows) As a result, they also deteriorated more quickly.

Among the 567 patients, 79 were African American and they were significantly younger than the white patients.

What is MS?

MS is a neurological disease, meaning it affects the nervous system. For some reason, it attacks the myelin, the protective covering that surrounds the nerves of the central nervous system. When the coating is broken down, the nerves short circuit, so to speak, and the message from the brain can’t reach the intended target.

Signs and symptoms often begin with difficulty with coordination and balance (gait), blurry vision, and numbness in various parts of the body. With African Americans, not only do these symptoms appear and progress more rapidly, they don’t recover as fully from attacks and the attacks happen more frequently.

More studies need to be done to begin to understand why this happens and to find ways to help those who are affected, but knowing that African Americans develop the disease earlier is helpful to physicians who may be confronted with younger patients who are complaining of symptoms that may indicate MS.

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Image: MorgueFile.com