Family Members With MS

[Deb61]

How many of you (limbo or diagnosed) have close family members (sibling, parent, aunt, uncle, or grandparent) with MS?  My neuro told me when I was diagnosed it was just about as common as being struck by lightning.

Diagnosed 2008
Sister diagnosed 2006

[Quixotic1]

Oh, I bet I know which stupid article that was.  There is a group from the Psychiatry department at the Marshfield Clinic in (?) Wisconsin or Minnesota that put out an outrageous article called "The Differential Diagnosis of MS"  They had a dozen or more "Red Flags" and stated that if you had one of the red flags then it would be rare for you to have MS.  These red flags included 1) Strong family history, 2) age over 50, 3) history of depression, 4) few MRI lesions, 5) negative CSF, 6) no sensory "level" as seen in Transverse Myelitis, 7) atypical MRI, 8) lack of clear relapses and so on.

That article, I think, harmed us more than any other piece of garbage in the literature for the last 20 years.  They haughtily claimed that 70-some% of all people referred to any MS Clinic did NOT have MS, but rather had a psychiatric disease and that they had an assessment tool that had been verified that proved this.  We have had many vitriolic discussions of the unprofessional and harmful nature of this.

And, now, I am mad all over again.  Of course, I had SIX of their red flags - yet here I am.

Having a 1st degree relative (parent, child, sibling) increased your chance of having MS by quite a bit as the statistics above in my first post show.  However, beyond first degree the rise in risk is not great, so that includes grandparents, aunts, and uncles .  Beyond those there is no  significantly greater risk (eg, great aunts/uncles, great grandparents, cousins).

A comment about Red Flags.  That bad article misused the fed flags by saying that they are almost proof positive that you didn't have MS.  The Red Flags - and there are some - do not mean that MS is not the ultimate diagnosis.  They are just what a flag should indicate.  They indicate that the doctor should thoroughly consider the diagnostic process including those other things that might fall under the flag's diagnoses.  They are just a signal to consider all possibilities, which is appropriate.

I can't describe the horrible things I wish on those "shrinks" who arrogantly say that if you are not CLASSIC for MS, then you have a psychiatric diagnosis instead.  I fear too many of our poorer neuros read that article and believed everything it said.

Quix

[Deb61]

I have learned something from the poll.  I really did think that the odds of having a sister with the disease was so incredibly low that I even questioned my diagnosis.  I'm learning through the poll that the odds, 1 in 20, are nowhere near as slim as I thought.  

You can't say that genetics has everything to do with it, but it does (or an environmental cause) appear to have something to do with it from just the 16 of the 36 people that have polled.  That's a much bigger number that I thought.  

This poll is nowhere near scientific, but I now know that because my sister has it, it doesn't mean that the MS diagnosis was bogus as I had read in an ariticle that questions MS if a close relative has it.  Some article (I wished I had saved it) stated that if you have a family history of neurological problems, that the diagnosis should point AWAY from MS.  That was the reason for the poll.  

Thanks everyone!  
Deb

[jumpinjiminy]

My grandfather had it. There is also a familial tremor of the hands on the same side - paternal. Mom's side has diabetes and gout. So more autoimmune from that side. They don't know what I have, but it's looking like a spinal tap will be ordered soon. They just have to figure out what to test for first.

[Pablo_Morphy]

In my case, nobody in my family has so far gotten MS.  However...

When I was diagnosed with CIS, I asked my mom if she knew anybody in the family with MS.  She said no, but then told me that she heard from her mom that her grandfather had been sick with a 'mysterious illness' that had left him half-paralyzed in his late 30s, 'after being working in the backyard in a hot afternoon'.  This was in a small town in pre-WWII Latin America, so people thought he had been cursed or was just making things up.  He improved and got worse over time now and then and, after a few years, passed away.  I checked the story with my mom's uncle, who is 80 years old, and he said he remembered his father as a child, in a chair, with little leg mobility and 'always weak'.  On the other hand, my grandfather used to say that he wished none of his sons or grandsons got the 'awful illness that his father-in-law had suffered, whatever it was'.

So, go figure...

[Ufrustrated2]

from grandparents to now, i'm the first as far as i know

[Mike_Shuswap]

I've got a bunch of relatives on my Mom's side with MS, 3 cousins, 2 aunts, 1 1st cousin once removed (Granpa's brother's son) 2 uncles. i think I remembered everyone...

I also have several relatives with undiagnosed symptoms.

Oh, and 1 cousin on my Dad's side was dx'd with MS, but for some reason her dx was taken away....and not replaced with any other dx...but that's another story.

I, as well as most of my relatives on Mom's side, are in a genetics study where they take a bunch of blood and your family and personal history and try to determine why the high occurance of MS.

I sure hope my daughter's don't end up with MS! Or my Grandkids!

I think the high number of MS patients in my family may have helped my neuro dx me.

Mike