MRI Scans Could Help In Detecting Multiple Sclerosis In Kids
Multiple Sclerosis can now be detected well in advance in kids with the help of MRI scans. This can help in early diagnosis and treatment of the disease.
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New York: MRI scans could now help in early detection of risk of Multiple Sclerosis or MS in kids. This can be done much before the symptoms of this disease begin to appear. As a result, the disease can be diagnosed and treated well in time. If MS is not diagnosed in time, the disabilities that come with it can be difficult to treat. A study conducted by researchers from Yale University, US, showed that an MRI scan could help by showing the changes in brain activity which is associated with MS. Eventually the treatment can begin before clinical diagnosis of the disease in kids.
For this study, 38 kids were chosen from six different countries at 16 sites. All of them went through MRI scans for various different reasons like headache. But surprisingly the MRI scan showed symptoms of MS in the kids. This condition has been termed as Radiologically Isolated Syndrome (RIS) and had only been sighted in adults before.
"Children with RIS may represent a high-risk group of children that needs to be followed more closely for the later development of clinical multiple sclerosis," said lead author of the study published in a journal of Neurology: Makhni.
42% of the kids included in this study were diagnosed with early symptoms of MS around 2 years post abnormal MRI test. This is a sign of faster development of this disease which till now has been reported in adults. Kids with a certain marker in their spinal fluid who showed changes in their spinal cord in the MRI test were at the highest risk of developing symptoms of MS.
Makhani revealed that five children in this study were given an approved treatment for S prevention. She then explained that this number is too small to draw accurate conclusions about the effectiveness of the treatment.
"We hope that our work will help inform expert guidelines for how to follow up children with RIS and help us accurately inform families of the risk of later developing multiple sclerosis, something we were previously unable to do," said Makhani.
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