Chinese doctors have called on medical circles and the public to raise their awareness of multiple sclerosis (MS), a rare but serious central nervous system disease, to ensure timely diagnosis and treatment.
Although there is currently no radical treatment for the disease, early diagnosis and treatment may effectively put off the progression, according to Xu Yan, a neurologist with the Peking Union Medical College Hospital (PUMCH) who has designed a survey polling 1,362 patients nationwide.
The survey found that due to a low awareness rate, about half of patients had not been diagnosed in a timely manner.
The morbidity rate of MS in China is somewhere between 1.5 and 3.2 in 100,000, and it is estimated that the country has about 30,000 MS patients.
However, about 95 percent of the patients had never heard of the disease before they were diagnosed.
As some of the symptoms at the early stage may become alleviated without treatment, the patients may not consult a doctor in a timely manner, according to Zhang Yao, another doctor with PUMCH.
