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CD wrote:We are not contagious.

We can donate blood because they said, not one case of MS was ever found in a spouse of a PwMS. Unless, of course, they married a person known to have MS prior to their marriage

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I was told by Canadian Blood Services that I can no longer donate blood because I have MS. I can also no longer donate organs upon my death.

the_r wrote: What I meant though was the first remark -- 93% EBV in PwMS vs 66% EBV in HCs. And there I do recall rate of infection numbers considerably higher than 66% in the general population.

My question is, if we assume a general rate of infection around 90-95% .. does any control group that does not meet this rate even serve as a proper control group?

Correct. The general population has a rate of EBV infection of about 95%, according to the CDC. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/ebv.htm However, co-infection of EBV types one and two is less common in the GP. "Healthy control" refers to the relationship to MS, not to EBV.
cheer

While it is true that the vast majority of the general population is infected with EBV, it's almost impossible to find an MS patient that is not infected with EBV, leading some researchers to declare that "people who are not infected with EBV do not get MS.":

http://www.webmd.com/multiple-sclerosis ... nked-to-ms

The link between pathogens in the human herpes virus family and MS is extremely strong. A recent study out of Taiwan, which looked at hundreds of thousands of subjects, found that patients that suffered an outbreak of shingles (caused by the varicella zoster virus) were four times as likely to develop MS within the year as those who didn't suffer a shingles outbreak:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/227923.php

It's clear that these viruses on their own don't cause MS, but the presence of these "smoldering infections" very likely interacts with genetic susceptibility to start the MS disease process. One recent study showed that subjects with certain genetic subtypes were 20 times as likely to develop MS when infected with EBV:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/231596.php

It has been theorized that these viruses may also switch on normally dormant retroviral DNA that is incorporated into the human genome, causing a patient's cells to express proteins that activate an aberrant immune response. I've already posted this link here, but for anyone who missed it, this is an extremely important read:

http://discovermagazine.com/2010/jun/03 ... nity-virus

All of this does not discount the fact that CCSVI may play a role as either a cause or an effect of the disease, but along with possible vascular abnormalities, genetic and infectious elements certainly play a vital role…

CD wrote:We are not contagious.
We can donate blood because they said, not one case of MS was ever found in a spouse of a PwMS. Unless, of course, they married a person known to have MS prior to their marriage.
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Do you have a link for that info?
I really have to question that. MS is thought to occur in about 1 person in a thousand in the US. There are over 50,000,000 married couples here. Just "dumb luck" odds would suggest that there will be couples who both have MS, even if contagion is not involved.

If there are 50,000,000 married men then 1 per 1000 means about 50,000 would get MS. Those 50,000 men are married to 50,000 women and about 50 of them would get MS too. So there should be about 50 couples who both have MS in the US.

David I will check my sources for you. I'm thinking it was the NMSS' information links, and/or archives of statistics.

Also you must remember MS is more prevalent in women than men, so couples are not equally divided with MS as in your scenario.

Today, and the last 20 years or so, marriages don't last long enough to chart statistics. You are tossing out numbers here as, unlucky couple odds, this is not "Luck of The Draw," IMO.
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Sorry Ali, perhaps Canada's HC laws differ on blood donation. I am not sure about organ donation here, other than for scientific studies.

FWIW, The American Red Cross has determined people with MS can donate blood, even on most of the medications that they take. They have a medication criteria list to serve for all people, but that is the only reason.

Other than the fact that they worried more about the health to the MS person who donates blood, not the receiver of the blood.

Cheer and Marc thanks for the links. You both are a wealth of great information.