Living With Multiple Sclerosis Research Paper Sample

Introduction

Multiple sclerosis which is also referred to as MS is what is known as an autoimmune disease or illness. The disease is located within the central nervous system effecting the brain and spinal cord. Multiple sclerosis assaults myelin, the defensive coating of the nerves, creating aggravation and regularly harming the myelin. Myelin is vital for the transmission of nerve driving forces through nerve strands. In the event that harm to myelin is slight, nerve motivations go with minor interferences; nonetheless. However if there is a lot of damage to the myelin then scar tissue may build up and cause further damage to the person with MS. MS can result in manifestations, for example a person with MS may find that they suffer from a multitude of symptoms including:
being extremely tired,
absence of coordination,
feeling weak,
shivering,
hindered sensation,
vision issues,
bladder issues,
cognitive weakness

Mind-set changes.

Although there has been a lot of research involving Multiple sclerosis there is still a lot of things that cannot be explained about this disease. For instance nobody really knows what causes MS in people. The research that is available is only able to make a hypothesis that a multitude of ingredients added together cause the disease like a person’s lifestyle, the environment they live in and biological issues. When it comes to who is at risk of developing the disease there is no real limitations. The disease usually affects people between 15 and 40 years old however it has been diagnosed in small children as young as two years old and elderly as well. Some things that are known about the disease include that women have a greater risk of getting MS than men and it is more prevalent in persons with a northern European background. A person suffering from MS will have different symptoms over time and when the doctor notices that these are indicative of MS he/she will refer the patient to a neurologist for testing that includes an MRI or brain scan to see if there is any scar tissue which is causing certain issues for the brain. The life a person will live when dealing with MS is different for each person but depending on their symptoms they could require a lot of support. With so much still a mystery living with MS can be a difficult thing to do however there are a lot of resources available to help those who have the disease and researchers are working tirelessly to unlock its mysteries (Society, 2015).

Life with MS

There are a few different types of MS which can make the diseases manifestation different for each individual causing different symptom. There is relapsing remitting MS (RRMS) which can cause attacks that last for any varied amount of time. It is different depending on the individual some will experience an attack for days and others for months. After the attack the person will be in a period of recovery and during this time some of the issues they experienced during the attack may clear up. The majority of people (85%) with MS have RRMS. The second known type of MS is rapidly evolving relapsing remitting MS and with this type the disease is more active usually attacking a person’s body more often than the first type during an annual period. Secondary progressive MS is a transition that occurs for some people who originally experience relapsing remitting MS. Some of the people who are originally diagnosed with RRMS will experience changes in their symptoms and enter into secondary progressive MS which is where relapses become less or disappear and in replacement the symptoms just get worse over time and can even cause disabilities. Benign MS is another form of the disease that usually people with this form experience very few attacks and these attacks can upwards of 10 to 15 years apart from one another. Only 10 to 15 percent of people with the disease have this type. Primary progressive MS is another form of the disease where people just become worse over time and may quickly experience debilitation effects caused by the damage. This type of MS can be more difficult to diagnose as the MRI scans can elude professionals and come back inconclusive. The last type of MS that has been defined so far is clinically isolated syndrome which is when the disease only manifests for around 24 hours however the people who experience this type usually convert to a more serious form within five years of diagnosis (Datapartners Internet, 2015). Being familiar with the disease and knowing people who have it I was able to conduct interviews with a few of the people who explained that having the disease can be heightened not only by the debilitating symptoms but by the fact that the disease remains shrouded in so much mystery that it is difficult to deal with at times. Some people even explained there difficulties dealing with skeptical people who compare them with others who have the disease in an almost investigative way like because there symptoms differ than someone else’s they are lying about their experience which makes living with such a horrible disease even more unbearable. My assumptions of the disease were what I knew and that is that people with MS become disabled over time because of the disease however this experience taught me the disease is a lot more extensive than I first imagined.

Myths

People with MS often do not know much about their disease because there is so much still being learned by even the doctors that they rely on for help. There is no cure for MS and people only have ideas or hypothesis as to what the causes are which makes the actual disease difficult to treat instead doctors can only treat the many and varying symptoms. For this reason BC has set up MS clinics that have the capability of specializing in the disease and treating patients who would not be able to get the treatment they need elsewhere. There are many myths surrounding the disease so it is important for patients to have a practitioner who specializes in the disease and treatments that are available. The first myth is that MS Always causes a person to become disabled. Not everyone with MS is going to lose the use of their legs, in fact since there are so many different types this is far from true. The second myth is that if a person has an infection they will relapse. Relapses are actually considered when a patient gets new symptoms or experiences a repeating episode of old symptoms. This was something new for me as I was under the impression that relapses happened when a person became sick because there body was unable to fight the infection which is in fact a myth. There are other myths that have been debunked as well like the fact that many people with MS experience depression and steroids are not always the answer for symptoms. Without having researched the topic I found it surprising that the people I interviewed who have the disease were also unaware of many of these things. That makes awareness and education about the disease a top priority so that people can understand it more clearly and possibly a solution can be found or maybe even a cure (spring, Beuaregard & Vorobeychick, 2015).

What is being done to find a cure?

One thing that is being done to attempt to find a cure or at least treatment for MS is stem cell research. So far there is no research that has been attributed with curing the disease although scientist can agree that stem cells may be the key to a cure. However before this research will be applied in any clinical practices it has to pass many tests to ensure it is safe for the patients. There are two vague things that stem cells will attempt to do and that is to prevent and repair damage that MS causes to a person’s body. One of the ways that the use of stem cell research is explained is a complex use of stem cells to replace missing components that were damaged by the MS. There are various exploration groups worldwide attempting to create undifferentiated organism treatments for MS. Their normal objectives are to distinguish which undifferentiated cells are most ideal suited for the helping with the disease, which flags will have the capacity to wheedle them into getting to be focal sensory system cells, and the extensive scale lab strategies needed for sloping up the generation of the required cells. Oligodendrocytes assume a novel part in MS. These are the cells that wrap their myelin-filled films around nerve axons to structure the myelin sheath. Given the vital pretended by oligodendrocytes, analysts are extremely quick to create systems to transplant oligodendrocytes developed from undeveloped cells or invigorate occupant cerebrum oligodendrocytes to repair the harmed myelin sheath. Stem cell investigate on MS is moving down various distinctive streets and a few triumphs along the way have yielded early Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials. The lion's share of these is trying the security of grown-up undeveloped cells. In spite of the fact that researchers have since a long time ago imagined utilizing foundational microorganisms as a hotspot for supplanting myelin-shaping cells lost amid MS, it is getting to be progressively pass that undifferentiated organisms are additionally ready to control the safe framework. Researchers hypothesize that this is one of the ways stem cells will treat and possibly cure people with MS (foundation, 2015).
Stem cells are only one of the ways researchers are attempting to treat people with MS and possibly develop a cure. There is also a bone marrow treatment that is in the process of being developed and is expected to help drastically improve the lives of those with MS. Scientists have discovered that the same treatment that is used for bone cancer patients may have uses in patients with MS as it can be used to stop the symptoms of the disease. This treatment uses bone marrow transplants to help the patients who are suffering with debilitating symptoms caused by MS. One woman discovered the impossible struggles of MS as so many do at a very young age and within 5 years she was facing disability as she could no longer participate in so many life events like driving and working and this woman Jennifer was now under 24 hour care of a hospital while she tried to manage her worsening symptoms. That is when bone marrow treatment became an option that was viable. This treatment has shown major success in slowing down the progression of MS in 30 other cases however in Jennifer’s case the results were even better. Not only did the treatment stop the disease from progressing all of her current symptoms have disappeared and she now no longer needed crutches or a walker, she could lead a normal life. The doctors do not call Jenifer’s treatment a cure they refer to it as a lasting remission however Jennifer feels differently. She is an advocate for bone marrow treatment and insists that now a decade later with no symptoms this treatment cured her and freed her from the binds of the disease MS (Sornberger, 2015).
When a person is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis the defining and hardest part of the disease to cope with is that this is with them for life and there is no cure. Although currently there is no clinical cure available this disease has many cures or treatments that are being tested and showing much success. One such self-proclaimed cure is being showcased by an Italian doctor who says the results of his treatment have been more than promising for people suffering from the disease. His treatment is in the form of an operation where the doctor has discovered a way to unblock restricted blood flow out of the brain. By doing this 73% of the patients he has performed this surgery on have not experienced any relapses since the surgery and the doctor thinks this discovery will be the cure and change the way researchers view MS. The doctor had on driving influence and that was that his wife suffered from MS. He used his knowledge of the disease and research which pointed to iron as the culprit of the disease saying the iron caused a blockage in blood vessels which created damage. After gaining this understanding the doctor was able to discover through imagery that many patients with the disease did in fact display some sort of blockage in the vessels that eventually causes a person to develop MS. His first surgery was on his wife who as a result has not experienced any more symptoms. The medical community is still in the process of accepting the doctor’s unorthodox views however the positive results have given people with the disease hope that this doctor may have discovered a cure (Blain, 2009).

Conclusion

Multiple sclerosis is a disease that varies so much it is difficult for people suffering from it to understand. In fact doctors and researchers are often at odds on what the best treatments are for the people who are suffering from it. People living with the disease not only have to deal with a wide array of symptoms they also have to deal with the scrutiny of others who do not always take their disease as seriously as it should be. However there are many different researchers in the scientific community working tirelessly to develop a cure for the disease with so many faces that it has until now been considered incurable and very difficult to treat. There is promising results that have been displayed in both stem cell and bone marrow research that are offering new hope to people who are diagnosed with a disease that nobody can figure out why it happens or how to best treat it let alone offer any hope of ever being rid of it. In some cases MS gets worse over time and the symptoms multiply or worsen or both and for the people that deal with these symptoms the outlook on life can be to say the least overwhelming so finding hope for a cure is a game changer for these people. There is so much that I did not know about MS even though I knew people who suffer from it and a lot of the things I did know were actually incorrect. The interesting part of that for me was talking to the people I knew because they were also unaware of some of it making it apparent to me that there is not enough awareness about the disease. Perhaps that is because there is still so much that is unclear about MS and researchers are still trying to uncover the mysteries of this disease.

References

Blain, L. (2009). Italian doctor may have found surprisingly simple cure for Multiple Sclerosis. Gizmag.com. Retrieved 10 April 2015, from http://www.gizmag.com/ccsvi-multiple-sclerosis-ms-cure-zamboni/13447/
Datapartners Internet, w. (2015). MS-UK | Types of MS. Ms-uk.org. Retrieved 10 April 2015, from http://www.ms-uk.org/typesofMS
foundation, s. (2015). Multiple Sclerosis. Stemcellfoundation.ca. Retrieved 10 April 2015, from http://stemcellfoundation.ca/en/diseases/multiple-sclerosis/
Society, M. (2015). What is MS? — MS Society of Canada. Beta.mssociety.ca. Retrieved 10 April 2015, from https://beta.mssociety.ca/about-ms/what-is-ms
Sornberger, J. (2015). ‘A second chance at life’. Stemcellfoundation.ca. Retrieved 10 April 2015, from http://stemcellfoundation.ca/en/2013/12/16/a-second-chance-at-life/
Spring, J., Beuaregard, N., & Vorobeychick, G. (2015). Multiple sclerosis: Myths and realities | BC Medical Journal. Bcmj.org. Retrieved 10 April 2015, from http://www.bcmj.org/article/multiple-sclerosis-myths-and-realities