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Diseases associated with multiple sclerosis and epilepsy
Author(s) -
Lindegård Bengt
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
acta neurologica scandinavica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.967
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1600-0404
pISSN - 0001-6314
DOI - 10.1111/j.1600-0404.1985.tb03199.x
Subject(s) - epilepsy , multiple sclerosis , asthma , disease , medicine , population , diabetes mellitus , cohort , pediatrics , psychiatry , environmental health , endocrinology
– A defined general population of 159,200 male and female native Swedes born in the period 1911–1940 from an urban catchment area of the then only general hospital, was followed over a decade (1970–79) with regard to in‐patient hospitalization for all kinds of diagnoses. As a part of this population cohort study, multiple sclerosis cases ( n = 351) and epilepsy cases ( n = 648) were studied for association with other diseases. Unexpectedly, a cluster of diseases encompassing tuberculosis, bronchial asthma, diabetes mellitus and myocardial infarction, among the diseases associated with multiple sclerosis, also forms a gradient; this suggests a quantitative rather than a qualitative multifactorial model of disease for the understanding of the pathogenesis of MS. In epilepsy, heterogeneity was suggested as being mainly linked to the presence or absence of co‐existing alcoholism. Brain tumours in cases of epilepsy were found almost exclusively in the latter subset and prevailing among younger people independent of sex (with an almost 100‐fold excess rate of that disease combination as expected by chance only).