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MS Relapses: How to Deal with Them

Summary & Participants

Relapses can be difficult reminders that a person has MS. However interferon therapy can often decrease the frequency of relapses. There are also a variety of treatments that can soften the blows once a relapse occurs. Learn more about what people living with MS can do to help themselves when relapses happen.

Medically Reviewed On: July 23, 2008

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: Some diseases are tricky. Such is the case with multiple sclerosis, a disease that attacks the central nervous system. While the condition may be life-long, there are often long periods during which people with MS feel relatively well. Then suddenly there is a relapse and symptoms reappear.

DUSAN STEFOSKI, MD: Relapses occur in about 90 percent of all people with multiple sclerosis, and what relapse implies is that symptoms have worsened relatively abruptly over a period of hours, perhaps over several days, maybe up to a week or a bit longer.

ANNOUNCER: The symptoms of a relapse can be unpredictable.

DUSAN STEFOSKI, MD: That can be various types of numbness and tingling, weakness in one limb or more, double vision, loss of vision (usually in one eye), difficulties with bladder and bowel control, trouble with balance when walking and standing. Trouble with coordination of hands. That sort of thing; even trouble speaking, swallowing, and breathing at times.

ANNOUNCER: In a person already diagnosed with MS, a relapse will mean a new symptom or the worsening of an old one. And the duration of the relapse is unpredictable.

PATRICK PARCELLS, MD: It's probably going to take a few weeks to potentially even a month to get better, but it may take up to six months. That if you still have any residual problems in six months, that that may last indefinitely. There's a good chance, most of the time, particularly early in MS, most relapses do recover fully.

ANNOUNCER: Currently ms is not curable, but there are medications called interferons that can decrease relapses, and in some cases lessen the damage done.

PATRICK PARCELLS, MD: The average, if you'd look at all MS patients, of relapses, is actually about one per year. And in the studies with the interferons, that average was diminished by about 30 percent.

ANNOUNCER: Relapses may occur even on interferon therapy.

PATRICK PARCELLS, MD: It doesn't mean that there's a failure of interferon. It just means that that relapse still occurred in spite of interferon. I always tell patients there's a greater risk you would be even worse if you weren't on treatment; that you certainly need to stay on treatment.

ANNOUNCER: If treated early, the symptoms of a relapse can be lessened with steroids.

PATRICK PARCELLS, MD: That can certainly make patients feel better, shortens the length of time the relapse will occur, and they will improve more quickly.

ANNOUNCER: Sometimes there is "break-through MS" which means too many relapses or too much progression of disabilities. At that point other drugs may be added to interferon. This is called combination therapy.

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