Degenerative Spine Disorders and Multiple Sclerosis.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune inflammatory disease that results in demyelination of the central nervous system (CNS). MS affects as many as 350,000 individuals in the United States and commonly presents before the age of 45 years. Patients with MS, as the general population, are likely to encounter degenerative changes of the spine as they age, and this can pose a unique challenge to both patients with MS and physicians, as both conditions can have a great deal of symptomatic overlap despite stark differences in management. Currently there is no definitive approach that allows physicians to distinguish between the 2 conditions; however, specific clinical and radiologic findings have been identified as being useful in evaluating these patients.