Living with multiple sclerosis means constant monitoring of how the disease affects the body. Doctors often rely on brain scans to see if the condition is stable. However, new data suggests that looking only at the brain might miss important activity happening in the spinal cord.
Researchers looked at MRI scans from 1,637 people with stable multiple sclerosis. They found that 13% of these patients developed at least one new asymptomatic spinal cord lesion. This number was even higher, at 19.1%, for those with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. These lesions are areas of damage that do not show immediate symptoms but still indicate activity.
Because of these findings, doctors may need to look closer at the spine during checkups. While the data on isolated spinal cord activity was hard to group together perfectly due to different ways of measuring it, the overall finding is clear. Relying only on brain scans might not give the full picture of what is happening in the body.
