Over 25,600 people in Australia and more than two million across the globe live with multiple sclerosis. Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease where a person’s immune system starts attacking and destroying what are known as ‘myelin sheaths’. Myelin is a fatty layer of tissue that wraps around and protects your nerve cells, or neurons. It also allows electrical signals or messages to pass more quickly between cells. When neurons lose their myelin, signals can’t be sent properly and the neurons begin to die. This leads to the symptoms of MS.

Depending on which nerves are damaged, people diagnosed with MS may experience from a range of symptoms, commonly involving problems with walking and sensation, bladder and bowel issues and fatigue. Every case is different. Not everyone with MS will experience these symptoms, and symptoms can vary in severity over time.

People living with MS are usually diagnosed as having one of three particular types of MS. Relapsing remitting MS is the most common form and is characterised by flare-ups where the body’s immune system attacks the brain, spinal cord and/or optic nerve resulting in symptoms. These attacks are also referred to as relapses and are followed by periods of recovery or remission as the body is able to naturally repair this damage. However, the repair is often incomplete. After repeated episodes of relapse, the affected nerves may die.

Once this happens, people enter the progressive phase of MS, where symptoms no longer come and go but get progressively worse over time. This is known as secondary progressive MS. More rarely people can be diagnosed with progressive MS right from the beginning of their symptoms, these people are given a diagnosis of primary progressive MS. In this form, symptoms are due to the damage to the underlying nerve cells and not primarily through the immune system.