SIMPLE blood tests could be used to identify children with multiple sclerosis after research showed that they are around ten times more likely than adult patients to generate key proteins which flag up the illness.
It is thought that around five to 10 per cent of MS cases first occur in people under 16 but the symptoms are regularly mistaken for other conditions, resulting in lengthy delays in getting treatment. Correct diagnosis of MS usually requires MRI brain scans and lumbar punctures.
Case study: 'No one would believe me - they said kids can't get MS'
However, scientists working in Scotland and the United States believe that accurate diagnoses could be fast-tracked in future by analysing blood samples for specific auto-antibody proteins after their research showed that they occurred in much higher concentrations in many child MS sufferers. These would be used as 'biomarkers' for the disease.
These antibodies - which fight against naturally occurring substances in the body, rather than external pathogens - have previously been shown in animal studies of MS to destroy in the myelin coating which protects nerve cells, one of the major consequences of the illness.
Professor Chris Linington, chair of neuroimmunology at Glasgow University, said: "We and others then identified similar antibodies in some MS patients - not all, but some - and while this was going on it transpired that children with a variety of de-myelinating diseases, not just MS, a proportion of them were found to have very high levels of these antibodies and in fact they were seen in 40-60 per cent of children whereas we would only see them in five per cent at most of adult patients.
"This was really exciting because it raised the possibility that these antibodies were actually helping to drive the disease by actually damaging the myelin. That hasn't been proven yet but it turns out that looking for these antibodies in blood of children with these diseases is proving diagnostically very useful.
"This is something people looking at auto-antibodies are very interested in because they are hoping they will be able to identify markers - that some of these antibodies might be able to help them say 'ah, this child in all probability is going on develop MS'."
Similar types of 'biomarker' blood tests are already used to identify many other types of disease quickly, including some cancers.
Currently, MS in children is often mistaken for conditions such as acute demyelinating encephalomyelitis (ADEM) - swelling of the brain and spinal cord - which mostly develops in boys aged five to seven following an infection and is characterised by similar symptoms to childhood MS, including headaches, vomiting and seizures.
Differentiating MS from ADEM requires brain scans, but even then it can be difficult to weed out the true MS cases.
Prof Linington said: "I am convinced that MS occurs in children, but the real problem comes in trying to make a diagnosis in young children because the brain is different in a child. It's still developing, and so changes that the scanner might pick up might not look like classic MS in an adult. It's a very specialised area. It's very difficult to make a clear diagnosis."
He added that while the biomarker research in childhood MS is "still in its infancy", it offers a potential tool to cut out the confusion and the reluctance among some doctors to diagnose the disease in children.
Imogen Scott Plummer, the MS Society’s Head of Care & Services Research, said: “MS can be a really unpredictable condition to live with and symptoms like the headaches Sam experienced can have a huge impact on a young person’s life, making things like school and studying even more challenging than normal. It’s vital that we continue to fund research so that children and young people living with MS, and their families, get the very best care.”
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