Hi, I was just wondering about the patients on here who were diagnosed with ms based on a positive lumbar puncture. Would you be kind enough to recall what your matching pattern and bands present in CSF were when you were diagnosed with ms. I apologise for asking a personal and sensitive question, you can reply anonnymously which will not show your member ID. I was wondering if anyone could also point me to webiste which explains what bands and what pattern in the UK is considered to be a positive or negative for ms. Thanks
Type 2 is positive for MS in the UK I believe. Basically oligoclonal bands present in the CSF that are not present in the serum.
If you google “type 2 oligoclonal bands csf” and restrict pages to the UK you should be able to find out more about it.
I don’t think most of us get told what the precise results are: just positive or negative. Remember that it’s not a definitive test though - it’s possible to have false positives (maybe 5%?) and false negatives (I think maybe 10%?).
Karen x
Thanks Karen.
I was just told the result was consistent with MS.
[quote=“daff”]
I was just told the result was consistent with MS.
[/quote] Me too
I was just told that they had, ‘Found what they expected to find,’ and that it confirmed definitively a diagnosis that had already been made on the basis of clinical and MRI evidence. I timidly mentioned oligoclonal bands and they said, ‘Yeah, those.’
Alison