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Multiple Sclerosis Centers of Excellence

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Number of People in the United States with Multiple Sclerosis

Mitchell Wallin, MD, MPH

We don’t know exactly how many people in the US have MS, but we are getting better and better estimates. In 2000, researchers estimated there were 400,000 people in the US with MS. We now believe MS is much more common, with 2017 estimates showing there are closer to 900,000 people in the US with MS. This information was published, in collaboration with the VA in March 2019.1

How did we learn how many people have MS in the US?

The National MS Society funded a workgroup to study how many people currently have MS. This study estimated the number of people with MS from health claims datasets from 2008-2010. These datasets were from the VA as well as two private health insurance companies and Medicare and Medicaid. Together, these datasets provided information on 125 million adult US residents. Researchers identified people with MS using an algorithm; a process or set of rules to be followed for calculating information. For a person to be counted as having MS they had to have three or more MS-related hospitalizations, clinic visits, or MS medication fillings within a year. The researchers combined these estimates with 2010 US census data to estimate how many people have MS across the entire US.

This study estimated that, in 2010, about three in every 1,000 adults in the US had MS, which means there were closer to 725,000 people with MS, not 400,000 as previously thought. MS was about three times more common in women than in men. This means that about 4.5 in every 1,000 women, and only 1.5 in every 1,000 men, have MS. MS is also more common in Northern parts of the US than in Southern parts. Based on the increases in numbers of people with MS in the VA and private health insurance datasets since 2010, the researchers estimated that in 2017 the number of people with MS was likely between 852,000 and 914,000.

Researchers in the workgroup believe the new estimates are much higher than older estimates because many people were not counted in the past. In addition, the numbers are higher now because people with MS live longer and because MS is now detected and diagnosed earlier. These new estimates are consistent with recently reported estimates from Nova Scotia, Manitoba, and British Columbia in Canada that were calculated using similar methods. This study is a start to better understanding the needs of Veterans with MS and people with MS throughout the US and around the world.

1Wallin MT, Culpepper WJ, et al. Neurology. 2019 Mar 5;92(10):e1029-d1040.

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