Onset of multiple sclerotic symptoms can slowly build for years, but for 24-year old Jessica Bell, only weeks after she began feeling numbness in her fingertips, she faced the life-changing diagnosis.

Bell said when her normal work routine became nearly impossible due to stiffness and numbness, she began researching her symptoms, all the while wary of her family history. Two of her uncles were diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

“I was in denial for a while because I did not want someone to tell me that I had it,” she said.

As the numbness spread into her back, a trip to the emergency room in October resulted in an MRI and spinal tap that confirmed lesions had developed on her neck and brain.

“It’s definitely scary, especially knowing what I was looking at and that it’s incurable,” she said.

Dr. Joseph Ashburn, a neurologist at Western Baptist Hospital, explained the autoimmune disease happens when the body’s own immune cells attack the myelin sheath that protects nervous cells. Why those cells turn on the body remains unknown though doctors believe it’s caused either by genes or through an unknown environmental exposure.

“We’re probably all exposed to this, but those that are genetically susceptible are the ones that develop MS,” Ashburn said. “We think that’s the case because as you move farther from the equator, the epidemiology is more frequent.”

In the United States, MS develops in about 0.1 percent of the population and takes different forms.

Typically, clinically isolated syndrome damages one area before declining and may not necessarily lead to MS development. Relapsing-remitting MS — the most frequent form of the ailment — damages areas before settling and lying dormant, only to sporadically flare again.

Primary progressive and secondary progressive MS have more frequent remission and lead to a steady neurological decline.

While there is no cure, the mainstay treatment remains interferon therapy — an immunosuppressant delivered via injection — which Bell self-administers three times a week. The shots have adverse reactions, but Ashburn said there is hope for a pill form known as fingolimod.

“Right now, most of us are sticking with interferon injections, but within the next five years, most people will be switching to tablets,” Ashburn said.

A strong patient-neurologist relationship is critical, Ashburn said, because a relapse can happen at any time and a quick steroid injection can calm the flare-up.

“Tomorrow I could be back to where I was with the weakness,” Bell said. “It’s really unpredictable and that’s one of the scary parts of this. You never know when it’s going to happen.”

Call Will Pinkston, a Sun staff writer, at 270-575-8676.