PHILADELPHIA – Correctly identifying the onset of multiple sclerosis in childhood and adolescence can pose a difficult diagnostic challenge, but predictive factors including older age, female gender, and the presence of persistent lesions on MRI are more likely to point to a first attack of MS.
In an interview at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology, Dr. Brenda Banwell of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, talked with Dr. Timothy Vartanian of New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, New York, about the diagnostic keys to differentiating monophasic illnesses such as acute disseminated encephalomyelitis from the onset of multiple sclerosis.