Twelve common MS symptoms on one body map, each with how often it occurs and what published guidance lists for it, drug and non-drug, with an evidence label. Press play for a tour, or pick a symptom.
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Schematic body. Each symptom point is a button: click it, or tab to it and press Enter. The steps above do the same. Prevalence comes from different studies with different definitions, so the bars are not directly comparable.
Fatigue: a day, three drugs and two non-drug options
Fatigue is the symptom with the clearest controversy. A 2021 trial found three commonly used drugs no better than placebo, while the 2022 NICE guideline still lists drug options. The day curve at the top is a schematic of an idea, not measured data.
Top: schematic, no measured values. Middle: MFIS fatigue scores (0–84, higher means more fatigue) from TRIUMPHANT-MS. Bottom: standardised mean differences; left of zero means less fatigue than control. 203,359,475
Walking: the fampridine race
Fampridine (dalfampridine, prolonged-release 4-aminopyridine) is the only medicine in these sources licensed to improve walking. The trials counted "timed-walk responders", people whose walking speed improved consistently, then measured how much faster those responders walked.
Trial
Grids are the published percentages drawn per 100 people. The race uses the published speed gains; the finishing-time difference is arithmetic from them, and the walkers are schematic. 172,173
Rehabilitation and exercise
Exam hookFampridine is a potassium-channel blocker that improves walking speed in responders (35% and 42.9% vs 8% and 9.3% on placebo); a history of seizure is a contraindication. For the bladder, the UK consensus checks for infection and measures the residual volume after voiding before treatment. 8,135,152,172,173
In plain wordsMany MS symptoms can be eased even when the disease itself cannot be undone. Exercise and rehabilitation have the most consistent evidence, and some symptoms have specific medicines. A worsening that comes with heat or an infection is not always a new relapse: see relapse versus pseudo-relapse.