MS research appeal

An Orcadian geneticist who is researching the causes of MS in the Northern Isles, is asking people in Orkney to help create a list of all the people with Orkney and Shetland ancestors who have had Multiple Sclerosis.

Dr Jim Wilson who works for the Centre for Population Health Services at the University of Edinburgh said it is important to work out the degree to which MS is genetic in Orkney and Shetland, through building family trees of as many people as possible who have or had MS and asks for people to get in touch with information about “friends, neighbours, relatives or ancestors who had, or have MS.”

Orkney and Shetland have the highest prevalence of MS in the world, and this research has been undertaken as part of the Shetland and Orkney Multiple Sclerosis Research Project, which was set up to support research to try to understand why Orkney and Shetland have such high MS figures.

He said: “Medical studies now routinely use tens of thousands of subjects, but when trying to understand MS in Orkney we are always limited by the comparatively small total number of individuals with the disease. Building family trees back into the past and including everyone who had MS in the last 40 years is one way to increase our power to understand the disease.”

Anyone wishing further information on this research or to contribute, can contact Emily Weiss by email at e.m.weiss@sms.ed.ac.uk or by writing to her at Emily Weiss, Centre for Population Health Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Teviot Place, Edinburgh, EB8 9AG.