Diseases associated with multiple sclerosis and epilepsy

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Abstract
A defined general population of 159,200 males and female native Swedes born from 1911-1940, was followed over a decade (1970-1979) with regard to in-patient hospitalization for all kinds of diagnoses. As a part of this population cohort study, multiple sclerosis, [MS] cases (n = 351) and epilepsy cases (n = 648) were studied for association with other diseases. Unexpectedly, a cluster of diseases encompassing tuberculosis, bronchial asthma, diabetes mellitus and myocardial infarction, among the diseases associated with multiple sclerosis, also formed a gradient. This suggested a quantitative rather than a qualitative multifactorial model of disease for the understanding of the pathogenesis of MS. In epilepsy, heterogeneity was suggested as being mainly linked to the presence or absence of co-existing alcoholism. Brain tumors in cases of epilepsy were found almost exlusively in the latter subset and prevailing among younger people independent of sex (with an almost 100-fold excess rate of that disease combination as expected by chance only).