Selma Blair-About Battle With Multiple Sclerosis
Selma Blair-About Battle With Multiple Sclerosis
Selma Blair talked about her struggles with multiple sclerosis after announcing her diagnosis with MS last October.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, the “Legally Blonde” star said she’s been dealing with a host of strange ailments for nearly five years, before undergoing an MRI last summer and that day discovered the autoimmune disease.
She said “I’m pretty much a nobody in Hollywood,”. “But when I read comments on Instagram from people who were suffering, whether it was from M.S., or anything, I thought, ‘Holy s—, there’s a need for honesty about being disabled from someone recognizable.’”
Blair told “Good Morning America” that, prior to her diagnosis, she had begun to experience symptoms of MS in form of intense pain and fatigue.”The fatigue was often overwhelming,” she said, recalling times “when she would drive a mile to drop her son off at school only to pull over and take a nap before she went home.”
She further said “I was in an M.S. flare-up and didn’t know, and I was giving it everything to seem normal,” Blair said. “And I was self-medicating when he wasn’t with me. I was in pain. I wasn’t always drinking, but there were times when I couldn’t take it.”
WHAT IS MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS?
1) MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS(MS)is more common in females and symptoms come in different space and time means different symptoms came in different time. In index patient weakness(35% pts),ataxia(11% pts),fatigue(90% pts),visual blurring which may present due to optic neuritis or diplopia, various symptoms in different time provide clue for multiple sclerosis and patient’s symptoms worsening due to heat also provide clue for diagnosis of MS.
2)MS is autoimmune disease of CNS which characterized by demyelination, chronic inflammation, gliosis and neuronal loss. Most common form of this disease is relapsing and remitting type.MS lesions begins with accumulation of inflammatory cells (mononuclear, T cells, macrophages) around perivenular area and infiltrate surrounding white matter also.
Blood brain barrier disrupt at inflammation sites. B cells also involved in inflammation. Myelin specific autoantibodies are present on degenerating myelin sheaths and complement system is activated.
Demyelination is main hallmark of this disease and remyelinating surviving axons form shadow plaques.
A recentely recognized feature of MS pathology is presence of ectopic clusters of lymphocytes which consist of B,T cells and plasma cells located in meninges, on deep overlying cortical sulci and also in perivascular spaces.
So MS is proinflammatory autoimmune disease directed against CNS myelin and other neural elements as well.
I’m very optimistic; I think she’ll be a different person in a year,” doctor Saud Sadiq said. “I have patients with M.S. who are surgeons, actors, a commercial-airline pilot, sports figures, successful lawyers — they don’t want anyone to know about their illness because they feel it could hurt their career. Her decision to speak out also brings awareness and increases research funding for the disease when people can see somebody affected in the way that she is.”
