The French are familiar with multiple sclerosis. But almost half of them are unaware that women are more affected than men and that they can conceive.
Well known, it remains in the shadows. Multiple sclerosis still suffers from certain preconceived ideas, according to a survey carried out by the Ifop institute (1) on the occasion of the World Day dedicated to this autoimmune disease. One in four French people thinks that patients who suffer from it cannot have children. Wrongly.
Some symptoms of multiple sclerosis are also unknown to those surveyed: half do not know that patients may suffer from constipation or sexual dysfunction. Slightly fewer do not know that continence, speech, memory or concentration problems commonly affect people with MS.
A progressive handicap
Symptoms vary among patients because they depend on the area of the brain affected during the flare-ups that characterize the disease. They can occur in a few hours or days and disappear – totally or partially – in several weeks.
After a period of 5 to 20 years, the disability can develop gradually. The available treatments are able to manage the flare-ups but not the progression of the disease.
Paralysis, total or partial, is precisely one of the most famous signs of the French people questioned. They are 91% to quote it. Both evoke muscle spasms and contractures, or numbness and weakness. Respondents able to cite loss of balance and tremors are slightly less numerous (88% and 83%).
Young patients
The heaviest symptoms are the best identified. This is undoubtedly why the majority of people questioned say they are afraid of the disease (89%). And for good reason: they know that it evolves throughout life, that it can affect young people and that it is incurable. Indeed, this autoimmune disease develops when lesions appear in the myelin sheath, which surrounds the extensions of neurons (axons). On average, patients are affected around 30 years old.
What respondents do not know more is that women are more affected than men. Only 56% of them are aware that the sex ratio is one man for three women.
(1) Ifop study for Merck, carried out among 988 people over 18, interviewed online
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