Can an MS relapse be predicted?

[Sarahsmom46]

I think we have discussed how some of us have "bad" times of the year when relapses tend to occur.   If we look back over tme to when our relapses tended to occur, there seems to be some pattern.  

For the past 5-6 years, my worst time of the year for health problems or something going wrong has always been in the April-June timeline.  Maybe it is just a coincidence, but I am not so sure.  

I had intended on going into this problem period in 2010 being positive that this year will be different.  Nothing bad is going to happen and I will get through these months without a single issue.  Well, here we go again.  I got strep, then it wasn't responding to antibiotics very well so nowwe are doing IV antibiotics.  My MRI done last week is showing new activity, and here I am sick again with a tummy virus.  Weak, feeling really run down and guess what...It's that "bad" time of the year.

Has anyone else come across this type of pattern in your own relapses or otherwise lousy health?  

julie

[Sarahsmom46]

You are always present a wealth of information and thanks.  I thought this was just my imagination and was hopeful that someone here would find a correlation in their relapses.

I'll take a look at the links and just might mention this, out of curiosity more than anything else, with my neuro on Monday if we have time.  He has residents trying to get their clinical rotations out of the way before graduatinig in June and would probably love hearing this come up.  

Thanks again.  Your research capabilities are so amazing.

Julie

[shoshin]

I swear I read an article that found that MS relapses are more common in the spring. I can't seem to find what I remember, but here are a few things that argue for that:

Temporal variation of onset of relapses in multiple sclerosis is not seasonal: results from the MSBase registry (http://neurologyasia.org/articles/20082_199.pdf):

In the background section, they state that "A meta-analysis of all studies in the northern hemisphere suggests that relapses do occur in highest frequency in spring." They then point out some weaknesses of these studies. Their own research found that "Relapses were significantly more common in spring in the northern hemisphere (P<0.0001) and autumn in the southern hemisphere (P<0.0001). June had the highest number of relapses than any other month in both hemispheres (P<0.0001)."

Multiple sclerosis: relationship between seasonal variations of relapse and age of onset (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8407141). This is from 1993, but they hypothesize that "the fall in melatonin secretion in the spring may account for epidemiological findings revealing a high incidence of relapse of MS in the spring."

Seasonal patterns in optic neuritis and multiple sclerosis: a meta-analysis (http://www.direct-ms.org/pdf/VitDMS/ONMSonset.pdf): "The results suggested that MON [monosymptomatic optic neuritis], MS onsets and MSE [MS exacerbations or relapses] in the Northern hemisphere present a similar pattern with highest frequencies in spring and lowest in winter."

Interestingly, people with MS are also more likely to have been born in the spring (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC544426/, http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121560656/abstract).

I don't get obvious relapses, but the times when I have started to get worse more quickly have I think all been in the spring.

sho