Multiple sclerosis, evening

Different people respond differently to any given drug, even if they present with essentially identical disease symptoms. Optimum dose requirements, for example, can vary significantly. Furthermore, not all patients respond positively to a specific drug (e.g. IFN-P is of clinical benefit to only one in three multiple sclerosis patients see Chapter 8). The range and severity of adverse effects induced by a drug can also vary significantly within a patient population base. 

Although we have discussed briefly the implications of biochemical individuality for alcoholism, for gout, and for arthritis, these are merely examples. A host of other diseases need to be attacked with the same point of view and hold the same promise of success. These include multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, myasthenia gravis, atherosclerosis, essential hypertension, ulcers, diabetes, epilepsy, rheumatic heart disease, nephrosis, liver cirrhosis, congenital heart disease (as well as a host of other malformations which probably involve nutritional deficiencies during fetal life) and even infective diseases such as tuberculosis or poliomyelitis. 

The precise meaning of the term multiple sclerosis is many scars. The words themselves do not indicate that the scars are even in the nervous system, let alone in myelin. The British terminology, disseminated sclerosis, is no more descriptive. Charcot, who first distinguished this condition from other disorders of the nervous system including syphilis, coined the slightly more precise French term, sclerose en plaque. ... 

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