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Atypical symptoms better than “red flags” for diagnosing non-MS



Despite some suggestions to the contrary, using atypical symptoms of MS to identify nondemyelinating disease is more effective than using so-called “red flags”, a study indicates.

Red flags – including headache, monofocal presentation, bone lesions and seizures – are not very useful for alerting neurologists to non-demyelinating disease, the Irish researchers found, largely because of the low prevalence of red flags among patients eventually diagnosed with medically unexplained symptoms (MUS).

The study of almost 250 consecutive patients referred with suspected MS found that patients with MUS made up 20% of the referrals but only 5% of them had red flags.

In patients with other neurological diseases (not including MUS) they found 80% of patients had red flags.... Read More - http://www.msrc.co.uk/index.cfm/fuseact ... ageid/1327

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