Multiple sclerosis is a disease of the central nervous system that consists of the brain and the spinal cord and usually cannot be cured but there a whole lot of treatments that are available to slower the progress of this disease. This is an autoimmune disease where by the immune system attacks the cells of the body damaging tissues.
Multiple sclerosis testing is done to detect if the person is suffering from this condition as it can be life threatening. This disease generally spreads over a period of years and is known to reduce the life expectancy of patients from anything between 5 to 10 years in comparison to people who are not suffering from multiple sclerosis. The early and most common symptoms are a feeling of tingling, a numb feeling, losing your balance often, weakness in the limbs or a blurry or double vision.
There may be a few precautions that you may be required to take before undergoing for tests for multiple sclerosis such as not eating anything for a couple of hours or not taking any medications or drugs that you are on for sometime of the day. Discuss these points with your doctor to avoid any unwanted situations during multiple sclerosis testing.
If you feel you have multiple sclerosis you might wonder how to test for multiple sclerosis as it is very difficult to diagnose the same. The primary reason for this is because the symptoms for these are a lot that may either be alone or may be seen in combination; these symptoms differ in their severity and in some cases may suddenly disappear or are similar to a number of other health conditions. A single blood test can therefore, not help in detecting the same. So how do you test for multiple sclerosis then? There are a number of multiple sclerosis tests that you might have to undergo that include MRI scans, neurological exam, evoked potential testing, lumbar puncture along with a thorough medical examination and study of the patient’s medical history. There are three types of evoked potential tests that can be carried out for testing for multiple sclerosis. They are visual evoked potentials, brainstem auditory evoked potential and sensory evoked potentials. For conducting this test for multiple sclerosis, there are wires that are placed on your scalp that cover the area of your brain and these wires have stimulators.