Editorial - Volume 19, Issue 3 - May 2017

At this time of the year, our attention is focused on the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers (CMSC) Annual Meeting, which will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana, from May 24 to 27—the week preceding World MS Day (May 31). The IJMSC editorial team will be at the conference, and we look forward to meeting or seeing again many of our readers, authors, and reviewers (some of you actually belong to all three groups). As in previous years, the IJMSC will have a booth in the exhibit hall. This year, you will have the opportunity to sit down at the booth and ask us any questions you may have about scholarly publishing during posted hours. In addition, we invite you to attend our second IJMSC roundtable on Thursday, May 25, from 12:30 to 2:00 p.m. Last year's roundtable featured lively discussions on a variety of publishing-related topics, and we look forward to continuing these exchanges. Due to the continued increase in submissions to the journal, we are in need of reviewers. Feel free to stop by the IJMSC booth and let us know if you want to volunteer as a reviewer or recommend a colleague. Finally, please note that the winner of the Robert M. Herndon Award for the best article published in the IJMSC in 2016 will be announced at the end of the Annual Meeting.

We mourn the passing of Dr. William Sheremata, emeritus professor of neurology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, on March 29. Born in Calgary, Canada, Dr. Sheremata served as director of neurology at St. Mary's Hospital in Montreal and assistant professor at McGill University before joining the University of Miami. In 1977, Dr. Sheremata founded the University of Miami Multiple Sclerosis Center of Excellence, the first comprehensive MS center in the southeastern United States. He identified a cluster of MS patients in Key West, Florida, and performed genetic studies with Dr. Stephen Hauser. Dr. Sheremata published many articles on demyelinating disorders of the nervous system caused by retroviruses.

In this issue, CE credit is offered for an article by Tummala and colleagues, whose findings suggest that spinal cord imaging does not need to be routinely obtained to determine NEDA (no evidence of disease activity) status. This is an important topic, as the increasingly rigorous criteria for monitoring the efficacy of disease-modifying therapies may lead to increased testing burden for our patients and contribute to rising treatment costs.

DeLuca and colleagues report on the MS Mentorship Forum, a 2-day colloquium bringing together talented internal medicine and neurology trainees and expert faculty and peer mentors to attract young clinicians to the field of MS care. This initiative is a response to concerns regarding a likely shortage of MS specialists in the future.

Personal and cultural beliefs can significantly affect a person's understanding of a disease and its management. Obiwuru and colleagues report on the perceptions of some Hispanic Americans—particularly those who were not born in the United States—regarding the role of strong emotions in the causation of MS. These perceptions may influence attitudes toward treatment. Such information is essential in designing culturally appropriate educational materials.

Measuring the outcome of interventions requires valid and reliable instruments, yet too few scales and tests have been fully validated in MS patients. Hebert and Manago found that the computerized dynamic posturography sensory organization test is a reliable measure of balance related to sensory integration in MS, which discriminates between levels of self-reported disability.

In a pilot study, Backus and colleagues found that functional electrical stimulation cycling is feasible and safe, and may improve pain in nonambulatory MS patients, a seldom studied subgroup.

MS patients are advised to receive the inactivated influenza vaccine, yet many of them receive disease-modifying therapies targeting the immune system. In an open-label, single-arm study, Mehta and colleagues found that individuals treated with daclizumab beta for over 1 year exhibited an immune response to the influenza vaccine.

This issue also features a report by Kimbrough and Newsome on two cases of Nicolau syndrome (a rare complication of injectable medications) after subcutaneous injections of glatiramer acetate. Case reports are an important source of information on rare clinical occurrences and can constitute the starting point for innovative care and research.

Whether you make it to the CMSC Annual Meeting or not, I hope that you will be able at times to laisser les bons temps rouler (let the good times roll), a phrase that can be heard during Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans.