equipment to improve your safety with ambulation, and other preventative measures. Quality of life is enhanced by attentive care, maintaining general health, and perhaps most important, by an optimistic and hopeful attitude of the patient and family.
We recognize this information is scary and overwhelming to learn and to think about. It can be helpful to talk this through with your medical team and your family, including planning for the future and your wishes for quality of life. CurePSP and the rest of your support system are here to help.
How is MSA diagnosed? To diagnose MSA, a neurologist will gather a person’ s medical history, including neurological symptoms, and will perform a physical examination. At this time, there is no specific test of body fluids nor imaging test of the brain that makes the diagnosis. A brain MRI can show changes in parts of the brain that would support the MSA diagnosis, but because changes in the brain do not always show up on an MRI, particularly in the first few years of symptoms, brain MRI cannot be relied upon as the sole diagnostic test.
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Your neurologist may decide to use other tests, such as a DaTscan, positron emission tomography( PET) scan, or autonomic nervous system testing, to help support the diagnosis of MSA. However, like the brain MRI, these tests can only support the diagnosis but are not sensitive enough nor specific enough to make the diagnosis alone. Given the rarity of the disease, many people with MSA face a long and confusing diagnosis journey. It is common to go through a number of tests, specialists, and diagnoses. It is our hope that better awareness of MSA, especially within the medical community, will lead to earlier and more accurate diagnosis.
How is MSA treated? At this time, we have no medication to cure MSA or to slow its progression. As research has shown repeatedly that cardiovascular exercise can slow the progression of motor decline in most neurodegenerative conditions, exercise remains a very important piece of disease management for people with MSA.
Some symptoms of MSA can be managed successfully with medications for the same symptoms in other conditions. Examples include medications to raise blood pressure, enhance sleep, improve bladder emptying, stimulate the bowel, treat dystonia and spasticity, and treat anxiety or depression. Drugs for Parkinson’ s disease that stimulate the brain’ s dopamine system, particularly carbidopa-levodopa, can be effective in alleviating some of the parkinsonism symptoms in MSA, though the response is typically not as dramatic or long-lasting as in Parkinson’ s disease. Your doctor will work with you closely to try different medications, timing, and dosages to maximize the benefits for your symptoms while also trying to minimize side effects.