“… researchers found that people taking teriflunomide had a 72% lower risk of experiencing first symptoms than those taking the placebo.”
Of course, you would have had to have had an MRI of your brain, showing the white spots that can mean MS is possibly coming, but the medicine reduced the MS risk by 72%.
I know people who have had both a preventative MRI and a preventative CT scan. It is great to get a baseline, despite the cost involved.
You uncover a few things you did not know, usually not positive, but you can address them, then.
Getting scans for other issues can also inform, in a similar way, and would be covered by insurance.
Mrs. LS was diagnosed with MS around 1995 or 96. At first she was on Avonex. This is painful (injected into muscle tissue weekly) and gave her essentially the flu for 2 days. It would basically take her out of action for a weekend. Finally, she switched (when it became available) to an oral drug (I think tecfidera) but one of the side effects, that was NOT listed, was hair loss. When she started losing hair, she got off that and has not been back on since. Her condition more or less stabilized with no further progression. Once in a while high stress will cause a flareup.
The problem with MS drugs is that no one knows if they work. People have such wide reactions. We know another woman who contracted the disease about the same time Mrs. LS did and NEVER took a drug and it never progressed.