oglioclonal bands in spinal fluid...is it alway ms?

Hello there nana684 I to have Oligoclonal Banding in my spinal fluid and to answer your question Is it always MS? No. Other diseases can cause this such as Lyme disease, certain STD's and various other conditions that involve the blood brain barrier. If I'm not mistaken Oligolonal banding is a marker for inflammation in the nervous system or when a pathogen has crossed the blood brain barrier.

I've been monitored every 4 months via MRI to keep track of the lesions on my brain and spine and when both the banding and lesions were put together thats when my doctors decided to confirm and treat for MS.

A lot of people get confused regarding the banding because on most lab reports from a lumbar puncture they run an MS panel which lists Oligoclonal banding positive or negative as a preliminary test to find more evidence.


Hope this helps
Mike

thank you mike. I am just wondering how they are going to figure out what it is. I had respiratory failure almost two years ago and the ventilator grew mycoplasma. I was paralyzed from coma meds. and had ivig treatment I am not paralyzed anymore but my left foot is in a constant cramping state with semi numbness..Neuro did emg's and nvc's all okay.I had blood tests for my including spinal fluid tests.blood tests for autoimmune diseases including lupus sarcoidosis,ra, etc... all negative. I have one hyper intense signal in the frontal lobe which has not changed in one years time at first they thought it was just normal aging.Once a year I get a three day long dizzy spell but it usually comes after an hv1 infection that I've had since a kid so the doctor put it off to labryinthis from the virus. I had bellspalsy also five years ago.The only other test that came back abnormal was the total complement ch150 it was high but all the others were normal. I had low d and am anemic also.

I don't understand these lab results. it does not say if there were any bands in the serum or not it is vague. it has igg albumin index negative,igg and albumin negative in both serum and csf.myelin basic protein is good the only thing it says on there is 2 gamma bands seen. so I do I actually know if they saw any in the serum. the lab interpretation is that is it not sufficient evidence for multiple sclerosis so how the heck and I going to find out what it is

I do have the same o bands in my blood too,mirror pattern. I had ivig therapy for paralysis