Age at MS Diagnosis Varies by Latitude

Which came first: better education of medical practitioners in a particular area of the world to look for symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS) earlier, or the actual earlier onset of MS in that part of the world? Well, if the findings published in December 2016 in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry are correct, it appears that it may be the latter. Using data on 22,162 people with MS from the MSBase registry, researchers determined that people living in higher latitudes — from 50° to 56° north and south — were diagnosed with multiple sclerosis a full two years earlier than similar people living at latitudes from 19° to 40°. With the exception of northern Europe and Russia, those latitude bands are outside the major population centers of North and South America, Africa, southern Europe, and Asia. Where Is 50° to 56° North and South? If you don’t know what latitude belts we’re talking about, I’ll give you an idea. Get out a world map, draw a line from just north of Vancouver, British Columbia; Winnipeg, Manitoba; and on to the northern tip of Newfoundland as the southern border. For the northern border, go from about Inukjuak village on Hudson Bay in Quebec to just north of Fort McMurray in Alberta (which would include only the panhandle of Alaska in the United States). That’s the latitude band. In Europe, the band includes everything from southern Norway and Sweden in the north down to a line connecting Luxembourg, Prague, and Kiev, and...
Source: Life with MS - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: multiple sclerosis awareness MS and family MS Around the Globe MS fatigue Newly diagnosed research trevis gleason Source Type: blogs