Talk:Multiple sclerosis

Medical Citation Needed

Paragraph on Epidemiology tags the need for a medical citation even though a medical citation is there. I'm not sure if the editor forgot to remove the tag or if someone is implying that the PubMed article isn't medical? Regardless, I'm deleting the tag, but I welcome feedback if you see fit to revert my deletion. This is my first encounter with the "medical citation needed" tag. I appreciate your WP:GOODFAITH. Pickalittletalkalittle (talk) 17:22, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

The reason that tag was there was because that citation isn't a review article (ie. a secondary source) that's compliant with the guidance on recommended sources in WP:MEDRS. That's the case with a number of sources used in this article Tristario (talk) 09:29, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

Improving top-importance medicine articles: Join the Vital Signs campaign 2026

The goal of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Vital Signs 2026 campaign is to bring all 101 top-importance articles—including this one—up to at least B-class quality. Many of these articles are widely read but overdue for review, so even small improvements can have a big impact.

If you watch or edit this article, your help would be very welcome. You can:

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4. Help address gaps, improve clarity for a broad audience, or improve image selection

To reach B class, articles should have: suitable referencing, reasonable coverage, a clear structure, good prose, helpful illustrations, and be understandable to a broad audience. Contributions of any size are appreciated. Femke (talk) 16:00, 20 December 2025 (UTC)

Adding BTK inhibitor treatment info

Evobrutinib is not listed as a medication currently used to treat MS. Would this be a good addition? https://mscenter.org/article/btk-inhibitors-in-ms-treatment-recent-clinical-trial-results-and-key-takeaways/ Meggg1111 (talk) 00:33, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

It is not an approved MS treatment. All NIH-registered trials were terminated, as of March 2025, including the largest multicenter study that was deemed unsuccessful.

To date, there appear to be no successful Phase III trials. Zefr (talk) 07:21, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

What's wrong with Pogoda et al.

@Zefr, this diff removed Pogoda et al. Curious to know why.

References

Dominic Mayers (talk) 17:44, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

1. It's not a clinical presentation, and doesn't fall within high evidence quality on WP:MEDASSESS, left pyramid

2. It's full of conjecture about MS mechanisms and unestablished biomarkers from lab studies or early-stage human research

3. It was used to reference general cognitive deficiencies better sourced to more basic clinical summaries

4. As a long complex report based on biochemistry and molecular mechanisms, it's unlikely to be an easy source for common users to read

4. By script detection, it's a red flag source as a Frontiers publication: #2 among dubious publishers on WP:CITEWATCH (see disclaimer). Zefr (talk) 18:23, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

I should consider the arguments in favor of these four points, but I have some preliminary questions. First, does the paper verify the content of the article it refers to? If not, these four points are superfluous and I would not consider them: the reference is not justified if it does not fulfill its purpose. If it does, the fact that it is the oldest of the proposed references suggests that a more thorough investigation of the original sources might be necessary. Dominic Mayers (talk) 22:32, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

Referring to point #3 above, Special:Diff/1354933122 applied the general clinical short reviews by NINDS, Tafti (StatPearls CME), and the UK MSS to cover the various symptoms. I suggest these sources are preferable to the general reader over the primary research and conjecture on mechanisms that might appeal to MS researchers. Zefr (talk) 01:35, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

I assume that you refer to "primary research and conjecture on mechanisms" that go beyond what is stated in the article. Am I right ? Dominic Mayers (talk) 02:58, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

@Zefr, looking at your recent edits, it is clear that you are moving toward prioritizing StatPearls as a source. It will be good not to remove minority opinions that are published in reliable sources in that process, not sources that guaranty truth, because this is an area where hypotheses are normal. The subject seems to be of a kind where multiple exploratory and opposite view points are possible. Dominic Mayers (talk) 09:21, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

StatPears itself is not a top-quality source. It's useable, but it will have more errors than a review in Nature Medicine or JAMA. It's often written by people with more general medical knowledge, not the top people in the field. Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience is a Q2 journal, and in general Frontiers and MDPI are borderline (not 100% predatory, only special collections should be avoided a priori). Their peer review is weak. When we're talking about hypotheses, it's best to avoid them and use the highest-quality sources to know what is and what isn't due. Lower-quality sources might give too much prominence to quite niche hypotheses, whereas the big overview articles are more balanced. We don't seem to be citing Attfield et al, 2022 yet, which might be a starting point for talking about the immune dysfunction in MS (not yet read it, but top journal). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 09:52, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

I took a critical eye of the 2024 Tafti-StatPearls short review, and reused it as a generally accurate, straightforward 'state of science' that is readable for a common encyclopedia user, WP:WFTWA (picture teens-30s).

In addition to Attfield, this 2025 Australian review is a good analysis of MS issues, although it presents appropriate caveats of "precise pathogenesis remains unclear, and current evidence does not fully support its classification as a typical autoimmune disorder", and a 'Treatment' section displaying the frustrating, slow-moving research for reliable biomarkers and therapies.

My impression is that the article is a case of not being able to see the details of a tree because the forest is so dense. Zefr (talk) 17:45, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

You are not alone in favoring the principle of basing an article on a few notable sources, which are therefore frequently cited, while the others serve only peripheral purposes. Your recent edits have allowed Tafti-StatPearls to achieve this status of a highly cited source. I am not sufficiently familiar with medical research to comment on this. My concern relates to the principle of neutral point of view, which stipulates that all (significant) viewpoints must be presented. It seems that, in this specific case, very few medical claims should be presented as absolute truths, and that all significant viewpoints should be presented, in accordance with this principle. However, I leave it to the experts in the field to determine how to apply this principle. Dominic Mayers (talk) 20:50, 19 May 2026 (UTC)