Sunnier outlook for MS diagnosis

The Australian love affair with the great outdoors may have contributed to lower rates of multiple sclerosis (MS), according to research from The Australian National University. The Ausimmune Study, coordinated by Associate Professor Robyn Lucas from the ANU College of Medicine, Biology and Environment and involving researchers from across Australia, found that people who spend more time in the sun, and those with higher vitamin D levels, may be less likely to develop MS. MS is a chronic disease of the brain and spinal cord and has long baffled researchers, who continue to search for its cause and cure. This study, published in the February 8 2011, issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, takes us one step closer to understanding the risk factors that may lead to MS. Associate Professor Lucas said that many people who experience preliminary symptoms of the sort that occur in MS - known as a 'first event' - go on to develop the disease. The Ausimmune Study found that the risk of having a first event was lower in people with higher sun exposure - over the whole of their lives as well as in the months preceding the event, compared with unaffected people of the same age and sex and living in the same region of Australia.  'People with the highest levels of vitamin D were also less likely to have a diagnosed first event than people with the lowest levels,' she said.