According to a study that is being presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 59th Annual Meeting in Boston this week, far more women are developing multiple sclerosis (MS) than men.

Multiple sclerosis is thought to be an autoimmune disease, and similar to other such diseases, develops in women more often than in men.

Whether women have always been more likely to develop it than men or whether this is a more recent phenomenon, is still a mystery to science.

However, for decades, more women have developed MS than men in the US, according to this latest study.

In 1940 there were two women with MS to every man with MS. However, at the turn of the century this figure had gone up to four to one.

Dr Gary Cutter, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health, who led the research, said:

“That’s an increase in the ratio of women to men of nearly 50 percent per decade.”

“We don’t yet know why more women are developing MS than men, and more research is needed,” he added.

He said scientists need to look at the lifestyle and other changes that women have undergone in the last 50 years or so. For instance:

— the introduction of oral contraceptives,
— the earlier onset on menstruation,
— more women smoke now than ever before,
— obesity has escalated, and
— women are older when they give birth for the first time.

Another area to investigate is the things that women do that are significantly different to men, and could be introducing health risks. For instance dyeing hair, and using cosmetics that could block the absorption of Vitamin D.

However, Dr Cutter pointed out:

“At this point we’re just speculating on avenues of research that could be pursued.”

The largest increases have occurred among young women developing MS, he said.

Dr Cutter and his colleagues looked at records from 30,336 people with MS who were included in the database of the North American Research Committee On Multiple Sclerosis, or NARCOMS. The information is held at Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona.

They analyzed the data according to male/female ratio for each year the disease was diagnosed and the age of each person when they started with the disease.

Similar evidence has been found using a Canada-wide database. This study, which was reported in the Lancet Neurology in November last year, suggested that the rate of women with MS had triped over the last 60 years.

And in the long term Danish Multiple Sclerosis Registry, which is said to contain 90% of the MS population in Denmark, the ratio of women with MS to men with MS was approximately 1 to 1 in the 1950s, but since the 1970s there have been more increases in women relative to men.

Dr Cutter’s research was sponsored by the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers.

The American Academy of Neurology (AAN), is an association of over 20,000 neurologists and neuroscience professionals.

The AAN Annual Meeting brings together over 10,000 neurologists and neuroscientists to share the latest findings in groundbreaking research and to update their training and knowledge.

Neurologists diagnose, treat and manage disorders of the brain and nervous system such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, and stroke.

Click here for National Multiple Sclerosis Society (US).

Click here for more articles on MS (Medical News Today archive).

Written by: Catharine Paddock
Writer: Medical News Today