There is new hope for women with multiple sclerosis who are pregnant or planning for a family.
Doctors say multiple sclerosis does not lessen a woman's chances of getting pregnant or carrying a healthy baby, but it does make the experience of motherhood more challenging.
Angie Randall heard the dreadful news of her diagnosis when she was 29 years old. She considered herself perfectly healthy, was newly married and was just beginning to start her family.
"My initial thought when I was diagnosed was, 'Am I still going to be able to do things that I always wanted to do? Am I still going to be able to have a family?'" Randall said. "It was really important to me to work with a neurologist that supported my goals."
Randall eventually found that doctor, had two children and maintained her career, all while receiving scheduled treatment to keep her disease at bay.
"Now, seven years later, I can look back and say that was hard, but I got there and it was worth it," Randall said.
According to the Atlas of MS, which performed a study in 2020, 2.8 million people worldwide are living with MS, which is considered to be both an autoimmune disease and a neurodegenerative condition. In the United States, one million people are battling MS.
Local
Dr. Riley Bove, associate professor of neurology at UCSF, said MS affects three times more females than males and is typically thought of to be a disease that affects Caucasian or northern European women. But in California, it can affect people from any ancestry.
"What’s exciting is that over the past few years we’ve been able to accumulate more information about whether certain classes of medications transfer into breastmilk and then how babies do if they’re breastfed with moms who’ve been treated with these medications," Bove said.
Get a weekly recap of the latest San Francisco Bay Area housing news. Sign up for NBC Bay Area’s Housing Deconstructed newsletter.
What they found was there was minimal transfer of newer treatments into breastmilk, allowing women to safely feed their newborns.
"We can really support patients to achieve the goals that they would otherwise want to achieve," Bove said.
Breastfeeding is just one of the aspects of motherhood. But with the new data, Bove and doctors studying this field are hopeful that in the near future they will get more support to amplify their research.
