Open AccessThe Epidemiology Study in Multiple Sclerosis - Relevance to Natural History
Author(s) -
J. Scott Sloka
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
mcgill journal of medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1715-8125
pISSN - 1201-026X
DOI - 10.26443/mjm.v7i1.634
Subject(s) - natural history , epidemiology , multiple sclerosis , medicine , relevance (law) , context (archaeology) , categorization , disease , cluster (spacecraft) , natural (archaeology) , etiology , data science , pathology , immunology , artificial intelligence , computer science , geography , archaeology , political science , law , programming language
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic, demyelinating disease of the central nervous system white matter that has been extensively studied using the epidemiological approach, and yet an etiology for the disease remains elusive. This paper presents a review of past publications that have made suggestions toward the design of epidemiological studies in MS. A formal search strategy is described, and a short summary of these papers is provided. A natural history of MS based on previous studies is proposed as a framework for describing future directions in the neuroepidemiology of the disease, and categorization based on the clinical forms of MS is described. Within the context of a proposed natural history, suggestions are made on the use of sub-regionalization in cluster studies across different domains, as well as on the use of specific reference points in a patient's lifetime in the analysis of clusters.