Blood test could detect the disease years before symptoms appear
Currently, multiple sclerosis is diagnosed by brain scans after symptoms of the disease are manifest. But now a team of Israeli doctors and scientists claim to have found “chemical markers” on blood that will allow doctors to test for the disease nine years before the illness hits sufferers.
“We are not yet able to treat people with MS to prevent the onset of the disease but knowledge is power,” said Professor Anat Achiron, of Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Medicine whose findings have been published in the journal Neurobiology of Disease. If doctors can predict the onset of MS early enough, she said, intervention therapies using drugs such as Copaxone or beta-interferon drugs that stave off MS symptoms might be used.