Newswise — MINNEAPOLIS – A blood test may help predict which people with multiple sclerosis (MS) will get worse during the following year, according to a study published in the May 20, 2020, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
“In a disease like MS that is so unpredictable and varies so much from one person to the next, having a noninvasive blood test like this could be very valuable, especially since treatments are most effective in the earliest stages of the disease,” said study author Ali Manouchehrinia, PhD, of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden.
The blood test looks for a biomarker called neurofilament light chain, a nerve protein that can be detected in the blood when nerve cells die.
The study involved 4,385 people with MS and 1,026 people matched for age and sex who did not have MS. The level of…
