When TV talk-show host Montel Williams disclosed last month that he'd been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, fresh attention was focused on the degenerative neurological disease that afflicts a third of a million Americans. Colorado has one of the highest MS rates, per capita, in the nation. For reasons that remain as mysterious as the cause and the cure for MS, the disease is most common along and north of the 40th parallel - Baseline Road in Boulder. MS, whose symptoms include difficulty in walking and the buildup of fibrous scar tissue on muscles, strikes Caucasians more often than other ethnic groups.
Women are twice as likely as men to be stricken.
The demographics also show that better-educated people are more susceptible. Nationwide, MS is the most commonly diagnosed neurological disease for adults between ages 20 and 50. The average age at which MS is diagnosed is 32. Schmidt noted that the common perception of MS as an imminent death sentence is false. Serious research on MS started only in the mid-1970s, she said, and the famed Mayo Clinic in Minnesota has been a major research center.