What do Gloria Stefan’s father, former Real Madrid player Javier Artero and the mother of the Harry Potter creator have in common? The answer is a life marked by multiple sclerosis.In Spain about 45 people out of 100,000 suffer from this pathology, more frequent in women, which has become the most common neurological disease in young adults after epilepsy.
Although its cause is not yet known, it has been related to alterations in the autoimmune system and the appearance of the first symptoms usually occurs between the ages of 20 and 40. In medical tests, degenerative and chronic lesions appear in the central nervous system, among which demyelination stands out: the nerves progressively lose the myelin sheath that covers them and that facilitates the transmission of information , giving rise to a burst of symptoms in the first outbreak of the disease: tingling, fatigue, muscle stiffness, problems with coordination, walking and speaking. However, the specific cognitive impairment profile of multiple sclerosis has not always been recognized.
What cognitive changes do we see in multiple sclerosis?
43-70% of patients with this diagnosis present a pattern of cognitive deterioration described as “fronto-subcortical”, since it affects the frontal and subcortical brain areas more. This profile is characterized by a strong slowness in the processing of information, failures in the capacity of attention at different levels, memory problems and alterations in executive functions, such as the ability to plan or solve problems. There are also changes in the way they behave . Patients may be more listless, unmotivated, or on the contrary, uninhibited and impulsive. In addition, depression and anxiety are emotional changes that contribute to making the lives of affected people increasingly expensive and dependent.
What can be done to fight the symptoms?
Although there is still no treatment to make the disease disappear, there are some drugs that have shown some efficacy in relieving symptoms in cases of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. In terms of cognitive problems, it seems that an intensive rehabilitation program can be of great help . This is demonstrated by a study published in 2012 by the scientific journal Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorder, in which a group of patients underwent a cognitive training program for three months. When compared with another group of non-operated patients, significant improvements were found after treatment in attention skills, processing speed and executive functions, benefits that were maintained up to six months after rehabilitation . Studies like this show us once again that all is not lost, and particularly in multiple sclerosis, tackling failure from the start helps slow its progression.
Marisa Fernández, Senior Neuropsychologist, Unobrain
