"Changes in the ascertainment of MS"
















Marrie RA, Cutter G, Tyry T, Hadjimichael O, Campagnolo D, Vollmer T.


A team of researchers including Dr. Timothy Vollmer, Dr. Denise Campagnolo, Tuula Tyry from Barrow Neurological Institute and RA Marrie, G Cutter and O Hadjimichael decided to test that assumption using the NARCOMS database, a voluntary MS registry based on self-reported information. They identified over 16,000 participants who met the study criteria (for example, who reside in the US, who had reported both onset and diagnosis dates, and whose onset began in 1980 or later, when MRI was starting to become more important in MS diagnosis). Analysis of the onset and diagnosis dates confirmed that those with onset in more recent years had a shorter delay before diagnosis than those with onset in earlier years. Analysis of disability data also revealed that those with onset in recent years had on average milder disability at diagnosis than those whose onset had occurred earlier.

STUDY CONCLUSION:
The delay from symptom onset to diagnosis is steadily decreasing in MS. An increasing proportion of patients with MS have mild disability at diagnosis after accounting for confounders. As the effectiveness of therapies is influenced by disease duration, this has implications for comparison of treatment effects in modern clinical trials to earlier study results."
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