Predicting the Progression of Multiple Sclerosis in Older Adults

There are currently no medications to slow progression of secondary progressive multiple sclerosis.

Approximately 80 to 85% of people with multiple sclerosis (MS) are initially diagnosed with relapsing-remitting MS, which is marked by symptom flare-ups followed by periods of remission. Most people eventually transition to secondary progressive MS, which does not have wide swings in symptoms but instead a slow, steady, worsening of the disease.

While some medications have been shown to slow or even halt progression of relapsing-remitting MS, there are currently none shown to slow progression of secondary progressive MS.

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‘Older people who progressed to secondary progressive multiple sclerosis were four times as likely to report having fatigue than people whose disease did not progress.’

In older people with MS, having fatigue and limited leg function is more often seen in people with MS progression than in those without, according to a preliminary study that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 69th Annual Meeting in Boston.

"Study participants with those symptoms were more likely to progress from relapsing-remitting MS to secondary progressive MS within five years," said study author Bianca Weinstock-Guttman of the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Buffalo in Buffalo, N.Y., and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. "Better understanding who is at high risk of getting worse may eventually allow us to tailor more specific treatments to these people."

For the study, 155 people age 50 or older who had relapsing-remitting MS for at least 15 years were evaluated for symptoms and level of disability at the beginning of the study and then again five years later, at which point they had been living with MS an average of 22 years.

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In all, 30% of people in the study had progressed to secondary progressive MS by the five-year mark.

Those who progressed to secondary progressive MS were four times as likely to report having fatigue, 92% compared to 68% of people whose disease did not progress. The results were the same after researchers adjusted for other factors that could affect disease progression, such as age, how long people had the disease and how severe their disability was.