G35 Multiple sclerosis

One study on Multiple sclerosis is accessible to registered UDBN website users.

MRC Multiple Sclerosis cohort

Multiple sclerosis is an inflammatory disease of the central nervous system with prevalence in the United Kingdom that exceeds 1 per 1000. The disease is well known to cluster in families, with between 15-20% of patients having at least one other affected family member.

Epidemiological evidence, including concordance rates in monozygotic compared to dizygotic twins, and the excess risk of disease seen in the natural relatives of adopted cases compared to their adopting relatives, suggests that this clustering is determined by shared genetic factors. Despite the established role of genetic factors in disease susceptibility and many years dedicated research, the genes involved remain largely undefined, association with class II MHC alleles being the only well established genetic feature of the disease. In recent years several whole genome screens for linkage have been completed in multiple sclerosis and, although not identifying any region of unequivocal linkage, these provide the best available estimates concerning size of the genetic effects attributable to the individual genes. From these results it has been possible to perform power calculations which show that association studies involving around 1000 cases offer the best chance of mapping multiple sclerosis susceptibility genes.