• Question: how to people get MS?

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    Asked by Bibo to Richard, Carolyn, Peter, Sara, Siana on 17 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Richard Unwin

      Richard Unwin answered on 17 Nov 2015:

      Hi Bibo.
      Hope you enjoyed the chat. This is a tricky question so I wanted to give you a proper answer. People don’t know exactly.
      What is known is that nerves have a special coating (like the plastic on the outside of an electrical wire) called a myelin sheath. This helps the nerve to transmit messages. In MS, that myelin is much thinner in nerves in the brain and spinal cord, so they don’t transmit messages so well. We still don’t know exactly why the myelin gets lost. Possibilities are that it’s attached by our own immune system, or the cells that make the myelin (Schwann cells) somehow fail. Exposure to some environmental factor or infections could also play a role. I found a great web page below which should give you some more detail.
      http://www.nationalmssociety.org/What-is-MS/What-Causes-MS

      Richard

    • Photo: Carolyn Nielsen

      Carolyn Nielsen answered on 17 Nov 2015:

      Hi Bibo,

      MS is really confusing and there is still a lot of research that needs to be done in this area. Something that is quite interesting is that it seems to be more common further away from the equator, so in countries that get less sunlight where people may have less vitamin D (your body makes this in reaction to sunlight). Some scientists think that there might be a link between this and the risk of developing MS, but this hasn’t been proven yet.

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