Like many autoimmune diseases, multiple sclerosis so clearly illustrates how detection and description of a disease only gets us so far when it comes to prevention, treatment, and cure. In the over 150 years since the first comprehensive description of multiple sclerosis, a great deal of progress has been made to understand the what and how of this disease, but many mysteries still abound, especially surrounding the why. In this episode, we explore what we do know about how this disease works, including a discussion about two recent headline-making scientific articles implicating a certain virus in disease onset or progression. We then trace its history all the way from an ice skating saint to a sympathetic sister, and we end the episode by taking measure of the global status of this disease. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts!
| History | Biology |
| Dusenbery, Maya. Doing harm: The truth about how bad medicine and lazy science leave women dismissed, misdiagnosed, and sick. HarperCollins, 2018. | Brownlee, W.J., Hardy, T.A., Fazekas, F. and Miller, D.H., 2017. Diagnosis of multiple sclerosis: progress and challenges. The Lancet, 389(10076), pp.1336-1346. |
| Murray, T. Jock. Multiple sclerosis: the history of a disease. Demos medical publishing, 2004. | Lassmann, H., 2018. Multiple sclerosis pathology. Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine, 8(3), p.a028936. |
| Bove, Riley M. “Why monkeys do not get multiple sclerosis (spontaneously) An evolutionary approach.” Evolution, medicine, and public health 2018.1 (2018): 43-59. | Dobson, R. and Giovannoni, G., 2019. Multiple sclerosis–a review. European journal of neurology, 26(1), pp.27-40. |
| Butler, Michelle A., and Thomas L. Bennett. “In search of a conceptualization of multiple sclerosis: a historical perspective.” Neuropsychology review 13.2 (2003): 93-112. | Oh, J., Vidal-Jordana, A. and Montalban, X., 2018. Multiple sclerosis: clinical aspects. Current opinion in neurology, 31(6), pp.752-759. |
| Hickey, William F. “The pathology of multiple sclerosis: a historical perspective.” Journal of neuroimmunology 98.1 (1999): 37-44. | Baranzini, S.E. and Oksenberg, J.R., 2017. The genetics of multiple sclerosis: from 0 to 200 in 50 years. Trends in genetics, 33(12), pp.960-970. |
| Holmøy, Trygve. “A Norse contribution to the history of neurological diseases.” European neurology 55.1 (2006): 57-58. | Hauser, S.L. and Cree, B.A., 2020. Treatment of multiple sclerosis: a review. The American Journal of Medicine. |
| Landtblom, Anne-Marie, et al. “The first case history of multiple sclerosis: Augustus d’Esté (1794–1848).” Neurological sciences 31.1 (2010): 29-33. | Bjornevik, K., Cortese, M., Healy, B.C., Kuhle, J., Mina, M.J., Leng, Y., Elledge, S.J., Niebuhr, D.W., Scher, A.I., Munger, K.L. and Ascherio, A., 2022. Longitudinal analysis reveals high prevalence of Epstein-Barr virus associated with multiple sclerosis. Science. |
| Masuccio, Fabio Giuseppe, et al. “Imaging and depression in multiple sclerosis: a historical perspective.” Neurological Sciences (2021): 1-11. | Lanz, Tobias V., et al. “Clonally expanded B cells in multiple sclerosis bind EBV EBNA1 and GlialCAM.” Nature (2022): 1-7. |
| Medaer, R. “Does the history of multiple sclerosis go back as far as the 14th century?.” Acta neurologica Scandinavica 60.3 (1979): 189-192. | Bar-Or, A., Pender, M.P., Khanna, R., Steinman, L., Hartung, H.P., Maniar, T., Croze, E., Aftab, B.T., Giovannoni, G. and Joshi, M.A., 2020. Epstein–Barr virus in multiple sclerosis: theory and emerging immunotherapies. Trends in molecular medicine, 26(3), pp.296-310. |
| Pearce, J. M. S. “Historical descriptions of multiple sclerosis.” European neurology 54.1 (2005): 49-53. | Young, L.S. and Rickinson, A.B., 2004. Epstein–Barr virus: 40 years on. Nature Reviews Cancer, 4(10), pp.757-768. |
| Poser, Charles M. “The dissemination of multiple sclerosis: a Viking saga? A historical essay.” Annals of Neurology: Official Journal of the American Neurological Association and the Child Neurology Society 36.S2 (1994): S231-S243. | Macsween, K.F. and Crawford, D.H., 2003. Epstein-Barr virus—recent advances. The Lancet infectious diseases, 3(3), pp.131-140. |
| Poser, C. M. “Viking voyages: the origin of multiple sclerosis?: An essay in medical history.” Acta Neurologica Scandinavica 91.S161 (1995): 11-22. | Leray, E., Moreau, T., Fromont, A. and Edan, G., 2016. Epidemiology of multiple sclerosis. Revue neurologique, 172(1), pp.3-13. |
| Talley, Colin Lee. “The emergence of multiple sclerosis, 1870-1950: a puzzle of historical epidemiology.” Perspectives in biology and medicine 48.3 (2005): 383-395. | Wallin, M.T., Culpepper, W.J., Nichols, E., Bhutta, Z.A., Gebrehiwot, T.T., Hay, S.I., Khalil, I.A., Krohn, K.J., Liang, X., Naghavi, M. and Mokdad, A.H., 2019. Global, regional, and national burden of multiple sclerosis 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016. The Lancet Neurology, 18(3), pp.269-285. |
Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links. If you buy something through one of these links, you won’t pay a penny more, but we’ll get a small commission which helps us keep things running. Thanks!
