Do you know what causes MS to develop?

In MS, the coating that protects your nerves (myelin) is damaged. This causes a range of symptoms like blurred vision and problems with how we move think and feel.

In MS, your immune system, which normally helps to fight off infections, mistakes myelin for a foreign body and attacks it. This damages the myelin and strips it off the nerve fibres, either slightly or completely, leaving scars known as lesions or plaques.

This damage disrupts messages travelling along nerve fibres – they can slow down, become distorted, or not get through at all.

As well as losing the myelin, there can sometimes be damage to the actual nerve fibres too. It's this nerve damage that causes the increase in disability that can occur over time.

Over 130,000 people currently live with MS in the UK.

Symptoms include:

• problems with vision
• problems with balancing properly
• bad memory or slow thinking

Get in touch with the GP if you or a loved one show signs of MS.

Published: Apr 25, 2022