Future Research Efforts in Aging MS

At the 2024 Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers (CMSC) Annual Meeting, NeurologyLive sat down with MS expert Donald Negroski, MD, to discuss several of the top presentations and data on treatment switches and aging in MS. Negroski provided an overview of various presentations, offering his clinical perspective and how findings may impact care going forward.

In this specific segment, the MS expert provided last thoughts on aging in MS, and where efforts need to be directed towards to further understand this concept. He gave insight on some of the major factors that could play a role in aging in this population, and whether they are related to the disease itself or other comorbidities.

Transcript edited below for clarity.

Donald Negroski, MD: For my patients that come in with various symptoms, signs, and complaints, and they're a little bit older, it's a struggle to see if their complaints are related to progression of their MS, or is it just related to normal aging. I mean, some patients will come in and they're more fatigued. I'm more fatigued at the end of the day, too. What we're trying to do is come up with some markers to see if it's really normal aging, or is the aging process accelerated by the fact that you have MS? Or is it related to comorbidities with a high BMI, cigarette smoking, and all the things that can advance a person's age, biologically. More importantly, what can you do to reverse it? We can talk about all these theories of why a person ages, but what do you do about it? There are some modifiable things that you can do from the beginning: exercise, proper diet, stop cigarette smoking, all that stuff. And we know that these changes really do help slow down the aging process and that's something that you can do right now, but the research coming forward will guide us to other potential ways of anti-aging therapies in patients with MS.