Diagnosis of MS – Prof G's MS Blog Archive

#MSCOVID19: get vaccinated

Barts-MS rose-tinted-odometer: ★ (Blue Thursday #000080)

Where are all the new MS patients gone? We have national data showing that there has been a 30% fall in the number of new patients with MS starting on disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Where are these patients? I suspect due to the reconfiguration of the NHS because of COVID-19 many of these patients have yet to find their way through the diagnostic pathway.

Many patients may have had neurological symptoms suggestive of a demyelinating syndrome and decided against seeking medical attention during the crisis. As these symptoms may have remitted they have now gotten on with their lives. Others are waiting for MRI scans, lumbar punctures and evoked potentials.

We were hoping our Barts-MS service would get back to some form of new normal, but this is unlikely to happen for some time. A big concern is a recent increase in COVID-19 cases as a result of the Delta or Indian variant of SARS-CoV-2. More worrying is the low rate of vaccine uptake in our local area due to vaccine hesitancy.

UK Government Data – accessed 17-June-2021

As you can see from the latest Government figures infections rates in Whitechapel are surging well above the national average and the vaccine data figures are very worrying; the majority of adults in Whitechapel have not been vaccinated and more importantly, less than a quarter (24.3%) have not had two doses compared to close to 60% nationally. At the Royal London Hospital, we are therefore bracing ourselves for a third/fourth wave of admissions. This will have knock-on effects and affect routine hospital services such as our Barts-MS service. The best thing you can do as an individual is to #GetVaccinatedASAP to prevent hospital admissions and deaths and to allow the NHS to get routine services back to normal.

I have little doubt based on the principle that ‘time is brain’ that many people yet to be diagnosed with MS will do worse because of the inevitable delays in the management of their MS.

Conflicts of Interest

Preventive Neurology

Twitter

Medium

General Disclaimer: Please note that the opinions expressed here are those of Professor Giovannoni and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry nor Barts Health NHS Trust and are not meant to be interpreted as personal clinical advice.

On being EBV-negative and having MS

Barts-MS rose-tinted-odometer: ★★★★★

I have been diagnosed with MS and I am Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) negative. Therefore, EBV is not the cause of MS. Correct? I wish it was that simple.

Firstly, no laboratory test is 100% sensitive and specific. In other words, some people who have negative standard EBV serology may still have the virus, i.e. a false negative result, and some people who have a positive result may not have the virus a so-called false-positive result. A very sensitive assay is one that limits the number of false-negative results, i.e. gets the result correct almost all the time. A very specific assay limits the number of false-positive results and excludes those with infection or disease. Do these terms give you a sense of deja vu? The COVID-19 lab tests have made them part of the public lexicon.

In this study below we checked out two commercial EBV serology assays and as expected they were not perfect. So yes you can be EBV-antibody negative and still have EBV.

Dobson et al. Comparison of two commercial ELISA systems for evaluating anti-EBNA1 IgG titers. J Med Virol. 2013 Jan;85(1):128-31.

High IgG titers against the Epstein-Barr virus nuclear antigen, EBNA-1, have been strongly correlated with the risk of developing multiple sclerosis. ELISAs are used frequently to measure EBNA-1 titers, however concerns remain regarding the accuracy of results. Ordering absolute results into rank quintiles for analysis may be preferable. Using 120 serum samples, two commercially available ELISAs (produced by DiaSorin and VirionSerion) were compared, both in terms of absolute results and rank quintiles. The positive predictive value of the VirionSerion ELISA was 99.1% when compared to the DiaSorin ELISA, however, the negative predictive value was 64.3%. Sensitivity and specificity were acceptable at 95.5% and 90.0%, respectively. There was poor correlation between absolute results, R(2) = 0.49; and the kappa coefficient for rank quintiles was low at 0.23. Although sensitivity and specificity appear adequate, the poor negative predictive value and kappa coefficient are of major concern. Care must be taken when selecting assays for experimental use.

In a meta-analysis of EBV and MS, we showed that when you use the immunofluorescence assay, which although being very labour intensive is considered the gold standard for diagnosing MS 100% of pwMS were EBV-positive. Interesting? Then on the flip side being EBV immunofluorescence negative was the most powerful predictor of not getting MS. These and other findings are part of the evidence that convinced me decades ago that EBV is the cause of MS.

Pakpoor et al. The risk of developing multiple sclerosis in individuals seronegative for Epstein-Barr virus: a meta-analysis. Mult Scler. 2013 Feb;19(2):162-6.

Background: Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection is widely considered to be a risk factor for multiple sclerosis (MS). A previous meta-analysis estimated an odds ratio (OR) for MS in individuals seronegative for EBV of 0.06. Given the potential importance of this finding, we aimed to establish a more precise OR for adult and paediatric onset MS in EBV seronegative individuals.

Methods: PubMed and EMBASE searches were undertaken to identify studies investigating the association between MS and EBV. Twenty-two adult and three paediatric studies were included. ORs were calculated using a fixed effects model. A sub-group analysis based on the method of EBV detection was performed.

Results: The OR for developing adult MS in EBV seronegatives was 0.18 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.13-0.26)) and for paediatric MS was 0.18 (95% CI 0.11-0.30). Sub-group analysis on EBV detection method showed that studies which used immunofluoresence generated an OR=0.07 (95% CI 0.03-0.16); for those that used enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) OR=0.33 (95% CI 0.22-0.50) and for studies which used ELISA and immunofluoresence OR=0.00 (95% CI 0-0.43).

Conclusion: The sensitivity and specificity of the assay used to measure EBV antibody titres have an influence on the association between MS and EBV. Looking at studies where two independent methods are used and therefore are likely to be the most robust, EBV appears to be present in 100% of MS patients. This has implications for future studies of EBV in MS. MS patients without EBV infection, if they truly exist, should be studied in more detail.

Now, what about the diagnosis of MS?

In the study below approximately 1 in 5 people diagnosed with MS don’t have MS. This figure is much higher than in previous studies. I usually quote a large Danish post-mortem study that suggests only 1 in 20 people with MS (pwMS) are misdiagnosed. It is important to realise that there is no one test that can be done to diagnose MS. MS is diagnosed by combining a set of clinical and MRI findings, electric or neurophysiological investigations and laboratory tests. If these tests fulfil a set of so-called MS diagnostic criteria the Healthcare professional (HCP) or neurologist makes a diagnosis of MS.

The underlying principle of making a diagnosis of MS is showing dissemination of lesions in space and time and excluding other possible diagnoses that can mimic MS. The diagnostic criteria have evolved over time from being based purely on clinical finding to the more recent criteria that include evoked potentials, spinal fluid analysis and MRI to help confirm dissemination in time and space.

Dissemination in time means two attacks or MS lesions occurring at least 30 days apart. Dissemination in space means lesions occurring in different locations, for example, the optic nerve and spinal cord.

The electrical or neurophysiological tests are called evoked potential (EPs) and test electrical conduction in a particular neuronal pathway. They can be useful to show the effects of lesions in pathways that are not evident on neurological examination or seen on MRI. The EPs can also show slow electrical conduction which is one of the hallmarks of diseases that affect myelin, the insulation of nerves that are responsible for speeding up electrical conduction.

The laboratory tests are typically done to exclude other diseases that can mimic MS. One test that is useful in helping to make the diagnosis of MS is examining the spinal fluid for the presence of oligoclonal immunoglobulin G or IgG bands (OCBs), which are the fingerprint of a specific type of immune activation within the central nervous system (CNS).

The OCB fingerprint is relatively specific for the diagnosis of MS in the correct clinical context. Please note OCBs can are found in infections of the nervous system and other autoimmune diseases, therefore, the presence of OCBs are not diagnostic on their own.

Please note being EBV seropositive is currently not part of the diagnosis of MS so you can be diagnosed with MS and still be EBV-negative. What we don’t know is whether or not EBV-negative MS is biological MS, i.e. the same disease as EBV-positive MS. This is something I have been wanting to study for a long time.

I have spent some time explaining this all to you as we neurologists get the diagnosis wrong approximately 5% of the time and if this paper below is correct maybe in even a higher number of patients. In other words, at least 1 in 20 people who have a diagnosis of MS in life don’t have MS when their brains are studied at postmortem.

Why is getting the correct diagnosis of MS so important? Firstly, some of the treatments for MS have life-threatening complications; you don’t want to expose people without MS to these complications. Some diseases that mimic MS can be made worse by MS DMTs. This latter is particularly relevant for NMO or neuromyelitis optic. Patients with NMO misdiagnosed as having MS get worse on many of the MS DMTs. Finally, a diagnosis of MS has many psychological, social, financial and economic implications for people. Just having a diagnosis of MS, even if you turn out to have benign MS in the future, has implications for the person concerned. For example, it may affect your life choices and may impact your ability to get insurance cover to name to obvious examples. I would, therefore, advise you to make sure you have MS and not an MS mimic.

The most common MS mimics:

The evolving definition of MS based on diagnostic criteria:

Clinical criteria only:

Schumacher, et al. Problems of Experimental Trials of Therapy in Multiple Sclerosis: Report by the Panel on the Evaluation of Experimental Trials of Therapy in Multiple Sclerosis. Ann N Y Acad Sci 1965;122:552-68.

Clinical, EPs and CSF analysis:

Poser, et al. New diagnostic criteria for multiple sclerosis: guidelines for research protocols. Ann Neurol 1983;13:227-31.

Clinical, EPs, CSF analysis and MRI:

What the evolving definition of MS tells us is that the diagnosis and hence the disease MS as we currently define it is a moving target. In other words, someone 10 years ago who do not fulfil the diagnosis of MS, i.e. didn’t have the disease, maybe diagnosed today as having MS. How can this be? This is why I would prefer to use a biological definition of MS. Yes, I am currently working on a paper that sets out the principles for redefining MS as a biological disease.

So what then do I do at the moment if I have MS and I am EBV negative? Until we prove EBV is the cause of MS and include EBV in the diagnosis I don’t think knowing if you are EBV positive or negative makes any difference to the diagnosis of MS and its management.

However, I would like to challenge the status quo. Can we really continue to ignore the evidence linking EBV to MS? Don’t we owe it the next generation of pwMS to act on this information ASAP? Is anyone prepared to donate several million dollars to a consortium to EBV treatment and prevention trials in MS, i.e. the Charcot Project?

Kaisey et al. Incidence of multiple sclerosis misdiagnosis in referrals to two academic centers. Mult Scler Relat Disord. 2019 May;30:51-56.

BACKGROUND: Multiple Sclerosis (MS) specialists routinely evaluate misdiagnosed patients, or patients incorrectly assigned a diagnosis of MS. Misdiagnosis has significant implications for patient morbidity and healthcare costs, yet its contemporary incidence is unknown. We examined the incidence of MS misdiagnosis in new patients referred to two academic MS referral centers, their most common alternate diagnoses, and factors associated with misdiagnosis.

METHODS: Demographic data, comorbidities, neurological examination findings, radiographic and laboratory results, a determination of 2010 McDonald Criteria fulfillment, and final diagnoses were collected from all new patient evaluations completed at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the University of California, Los Angeles MS clinics over twelve months.

RESULTS: Of the 241 new patients referred with an established diagnosis of MS, 17% at Cedars-Sinai and 19% at UCLA were identified as having been misdiagnosed. The most common alternative diagnoses were migraine (16%), radiologically isolated syndrome (9%), spondylopathy (7%), and neuropathy (7%). Clinical syndromes and radiographic findings atypical for MS were both associated with misdiagnosis. The misdiagnosed group received approximately 110 patient-years of unnecessary MS disease-modifying therapy.

CONCLUSION: MS misdiagnosis is common; in our combined cohort, almost 1 in 5 patients who carried an established diagnosis of MS did not fulfill contemporary McDonald Criteria and had a more likely alternate diagnosis.

CoI: multiple

Twitter: @gavinGiovannoni Medium: @gavin_24211

PTSD

Barts-MS rose-tinted-odometer: zero ★s

I look after a patient with MS who is now in her late 60’s. She was diagnosed with MS almost 30 years ago in the early ’90s. She has done very well and has by definition benign MS. Apart from mild unsteadiness of gait, a weak right leg that causes a mild limp when she is tired and back pain, she is fully functional. She was treated with interferon-beta for 14 years and after having no relapses for over 10 years she decided to stop taking interferon-beta. She made the decision to stop interferon-beta treatment when she retired in her early 60s. Her only ‘MS medication’ is 300mg of gabapentin at night; this helps dull the back or myelopathic pain so she can get a good nights sleep.

Despite having MS and a good prognosis she suffers from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) in relation to how her MS was diagnosed by a private neurologist in London. She had a prior history of vertigo and unsteadiness of gait and had developed weakness of her right leg, presumably from a spinal cord attack. This was before the world-wide-web and DMT era so most people in the general population did not know a lot about MS; their knowledge of MS was based on a billboard advertising campaign of the MS society showing young pwMS in wheelchairs. The idea of the MS Society’s campaign at the time was to scare the general public to donate money for research. In addition, to this, the poster child of MS at the time was Jacqueline du Pré, the celebrated British cellist, who had tragically died at the age of 42 from MS. Jacqueline du Pré had died quite recently in 1987 and as her death had been extensively covered on TV and in the newspapers. The general public’s view of MS in the late ‘80s and ‘90s was not a very good one; MS was a disease that struck you down when you were young and invariably caused disability and early death. How things have changed!

The private neurologist who saw my patient was not an MS expert and had not prepared my patient for the diagnosis. When she returned for her follow-up or diagnostic appointment he simply walked up to an old backlight x-ray box on which he had pre-arranged her MRI scans and said without looking at her that she had a large number of white blobs on her MRI, which confirmed his suspicions that she had MS. He then turned around and said that he will write to her GP with the details. And that was the end of the consultation; no time for questions, no information on MS its treatment or prognosis. My patient recalls having to walk out of the consultation with a cold panic enveloping her. Tragically on catching the tube home she ended-up opposite one of the MS Society’s posters of a young person with MS with a zip down their spine; the implication that the damage MS had done to the spinal cord was responsible for causing the disability. My patient recalls this person in the poster, leaning forward in a wheelchair. This is clearly not the kind of poster you would want to see minutes after you have been told that you have MS.

To this day my patient gets regular (almost daily) and intrusive flashbacks of this experience. These flashbacks are associated with a feeling of anxiety or panic, palpitations, hyperventilation, hot flushes, sweating and a feeling of doom. The flashbacks can come on spontaneously, but typically happen when she needs to come to the hospital and particularly when she has an MRI scan. In fact, MRI is such a problem that she has now refused to have repeat MRI studies. The white blobs have become a bogeyman and she imagines them expanding and suffocating her. Her GP has diagnosed her as having PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder and had prescribed an SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor), which did help reduce the frequency and intensity of the flashbacks. However, as the SSRI caused weight gain the patient decided to stop taking it. She has subsequently found CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) and mindfulness or meditation helpful, but clearly not a cure.

Interestingly, as I make a slow physical recovery from my injuries, I have started to have flashbacks about my recent accident. These are not intrusive and are typically triggered by crossing and traffic intersection or when I hear a motorcycle in the distance. These flashbacks are fleeting and not associated with any systemic symptoms. I, therefore, suspect flashbacks are a normal phenomenon for people who have just suffered a traumatic experience, but simply experiencing them provides a context and a deeper understanding of how traumatic it can be for someone to be diagnosed with MS or for that matter any chronic disabling disease.

My patient above may be an extreme example, but when asked a large number of pwMS tell me the worst part of MS is being told you have MS. In the Italian study below a quarter of pwMS have symptoms of PTSD and more than 1 in 20 have a confirmed diagnosis of PTSD. This is way more common than I expected this phenomenon to be. The question I ask is why are we HCPs so bad at communicating the diagnosis of MS? Is there anything that HCPs can do to improve the experience?

Nowadays most people who turn out to have MS already suspect the diagnosis because they have asked Dr Google. Is this a good or bad thing? Does it cause more or less anxiety going into a consultation suspecting the outcome?

George Pepper, one of the cofounders of shift.ms talks about his diagnostic experience as being a very poor one in that there was no support for people like him. This is why he started shift.ms, to create an online resource centre and supportive community to help people, particularly young people, come to terms with the diagnosis of MS. The Shift.ms YouTube movie Gallop is almost autobiographical and captures some of George’s experiences before and during the diagnostic phase of MS. If you haven’t watched the video before I would recommend it.

What were your experiences like? Have any of you developed PTSD as a result of being diagnosed with MS? Do you have any advice for other people with MS?

Carletto et al. Prevalence of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Patients With Multiple Sclerosis. J Nerv Ment Dis. 2018 Feb;206(2):149-151.

Chronic and life-threatening illnesses, such as multiple sclerosis (MS), have been identified as significant stressors potentially triggering posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The study aims to investigate the prevalence of PTSD according to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) criteria in a large sample of patients with MS. A total of 988 patients with MS were screened with the Impact of Event Scale-Revised, and then assessed with the PTSD module of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV and with the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale to confirm PTSD diagnosis. Posttraumatic symptoms were reported by 25.5% of the sample. A confirmed diagnosis of PTSD was found in 5.7% of patients, but prevalence could reach 8.5%, including also dropout patients. Further studies are needed to evaluate if adjustment disorder could better encompass the frequently encountered subthreshold posttraumatic stress symptoms and how clinicians can deal with these symptoms with appropriate interventions.

Crowdfunding: Are you a supporter of Prof G’s ‘Bed-to-5km Challenge’ in support of MS research?

CoI: multiple

Twitter: @gavinGiovannoni Medium: @gavin_24211

Parallel Universes

I attended an online meeting yesterday and gave my usual talk on why the MS community needs to change its worldview from MS being a “clinico-radiological” entity to being a “biological disease”. There are many reasons for doing this but an alternative MS worldview will allow us to (1) diagnose MS earlier, (2) start treatment earlier, (3) define prevention strategies targeting very early MS or the at-risk, (4) stop MS being considered two or three diseases, (5) develop combination therapies for smouldering or the real MS and (6) to manage MS more holistically.

If we think about MS from a biological perspective rather than a clinical (relapses) or MRI (new lesion) perspective then we will not be lulled into a sense of false security that we are on top of this disease or be surprised when patients who are apparently disease-activity free become secondary progressive.

One of the participants and respected colleague asked me what will it take to get the MS community to accept the biological definition of MS and to move away from the clinico-radiological view of the disease. I tried to answer the question but failed horribly.

On reflecting on my inability to answer this question I realised that I have probably been trying to do this, i.e. redefine MS, for decades and have failed. My research, traditional communication channels (journals, congresses, etc.) and new media platforms (blogging, social media, etc) are clearly not working.

Maybe the solution is to create a parallel MS universe, i.e. set-up an alternative committee to redefine the disease. This ‘New MS Definition Committee’ would use sound philosophical principles to define MS, avoid the diagnostic tautology that underpins the McDonald criteria, and include definitions that are underpinned by biology. We can then retrospectively validate these criteria on existing data sets, refine the criteria (feedback loop) and then set-up prospective studies to validate the criteria. Yes, validate them, i.e. establish the sensitivity and specificity of the criteria and to then establish how they perform in high, intermediate and low prevalence regions of the world. What clinicians and researchers need to know is the positive and negative predictive value of the criteria in their clinics. You will be surprised by how much incorrect diagnoses or misclassifications affect research outcomes (more on this later).

This parallel MS Universe will have to include a different research and education agenda to challenge the current dogma. And will have to generate a few creative memes (infectious ideas) and policy to speed up adoption.

I wonder how many of my colleagues would want to join this parallel Universe? Is the status quo tenable? The motivation for doing this is to improve outcomes for people living with MS and to prevent the next generation of people getting MS.

CoI: nil