Psychiatria pre prax 3/2009

Multiple sclerosis – psychoneuroimmunological disease of the central nervous system

Multiple sclerosis (MS) presents the most frequent demyelinating disease of the central nervous system (CNS) with autoimmune ethiology. Immune system plays a key role in MS pathogenesis and any CNS area can be affected by its inflammatory activity with various neurological and psychiatric symptoms. MS is a typical example of psychoneuroimmunological disease, which often requires multispecialty cooperation in terms of both diagnostics and treatment (symptomatic therapy, psychiatric adverse events of MS treatment). Precise diagnosis and early treatment is the only prevention of permanent disability in MS, the disease afflicting mainly young persons (2nd–4th decade) with significant prevalence in the Czech Republic 100–150/100 000.

Keywords: multiple sclerosis, central nervous system, psychoneuroimmunology, treatment