Multiple Sclerosis in Twins and Their Relatives

Twin studies in multiple sclerosis: A meta-estimation of heritability and environmentality

“…By doing so, we narrowed the literature to 18 candidate studies. [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] Third, by retaining only those studies that met the inclusion criterion of systematic case ascertainment, and by considering the most recent among multiple reports in the same populations, we selected for the analysis eight studies from independent samples in France, 9 UK, 17 Canada, 21 Denmark, 10 North America, 13 Italy, 18 Finland 15 and Sweden 20 (Table 1).…”

The Thymus in Clinical Perspective

“…Moreover, the onset of a thymoma and the associated diseases are often quite unrelated in time (Mackay 1966) and excision of the thymus in patients does not necessarily improve autoimmune symptoms (Alarcon-Segovia et al 1963, Fisher 1964. Experiments in mice, as already described, have shown that the production of autoantibodies is usually independent of the thymus.…”

Genetic disorders that masquerade as multiple sclerosis

“…Over the past 50 years, epidemiological and clinical studies have established that genetic factors play an important role in the predisposition to MS (6,24,100,159,182). Evidence for genetic factors in MS comes from family studies that show an increased prevalence of MS in sibs, parents, and children of affected individuals and from twin studies that show a higher concordance in monozygotic than in dizygotic twins (6,24,45,48,114,140,159,205,269). Further evidence comes from the observation that MS is associated with specific HLA antigens in some populations (6,8,24,56,83,91,99,143,169,231,233,265); other genes that influence susceptibility to or the course of MS have also been postulated (16,24,171,215,241,260) although some of these data are preliminary and, in some instances, conflicting (89,138,139,200).…”