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MRI results context help?

Hi everyone, I just found this site and hoping someone has had a similar experience or some insight to share.

For background I'm a relatively active 26 year old in generally good health, who's been experiencing nerve pain on and off for many years, with 3 distinct bouts of severe pain lasting weeks or months in the last 2.5years, with tingling and numbness in my foot and leg for the last two bouts, the most recent of which has been of varying intensity for 2-3 months.

Obviously my primary concern is MS, and I've sought diagnosis. Blood tests all come back negative, lumbar MRI is all 100% normal, but brain MRI came back with 5 white matter lesions <6mm in diameter, and none in contact with my ventricles or cortex. Dr I've been seeing is sorta avoiding telling me anything, but had said the lesions aren't incredibly alarming.

Big question: how normal is it for a 20-something year old to have multiple white matter lesions? All the information I've been able to find is in regard to individuals 50yo+, those with MS, or those with a condition that's been ruled out for me in differential testing.

Sorry for the long-winded question, help is appreciated!
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Avatar universal
This might sound a little odd, but since you mentioned the nerve pain, tingling and white lesions together it sort of sparked the idea of Ehlers danlos to me. If you have some type of hypermobility, bruise easy, have injuries involving tendons or ligaments in addition to what was mentioned in your question, you may want to have a look and see if it fits.
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I wasn't aware ED could cause neurological symptoms... it's definitely been on my radar as something else I should have looked at because I definitely have some indicators of a hypermobility disorder of some variety. Hypermobile joints and chronic injuries in my knee, hip, and shoulder, suuuuper easy scarring, that sort of stuff. Do you happen to have any resources on the correlation between neuro symptoms and ED? I'd love to read into that some more
Gosh there are some good articles specifically regarding ED and white matter lesions. I tried to grab some links but they are all PDFs.  A quick google search for those specific words should pull them up.  I did find a more general one for you though.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4300794/
987762 tn?1671273328
Technically its not totally abnormal for someone your age group to already have brain lesions that are mostly teeny tiny microscopic in the common locations. Things like mono, rec drugs, migraine, a few types of mental health conditions, some types of sports and even childhood head knocks can leave a marker on your brain, theres the possibility of covid now too so its possible your results are just not screaming abnormal, which is great, frustrating to be undiagnosed but if its not clearly an identifiable neurological condition it opens the door for there to be some other type of medical explanation for your recurring symptoms.

Hope that helps a little.......JJ
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