3 Predicting Outcomes in Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus 5 Pediatric Epilepsy at Mayo Clinic : Managing Seizures and Related Comorbidities Neurologic Surgery and Clinical Neurology News Neurosciences Update

For more than 100 years, neuromyelitis optica (NMO), known as Devic disease, was thought to be a variant of multiple sclerosis (MS), despite observations that acute episodes were restricted to the optic nerve and spinal cord and were more immediately devastating than in MS. It was not until 1999—when neurologists and MS specialists Brian G. Weinshenker, MD, at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and Dean M. Wingerchuk, MD, at Mayo Clinic in Arizona, published a series of 73 cases and identified distinguishing features of NMO— that the disease began to be recognized as an entity distinct from MS. NMO is perhaps the best known of the MS mimickers, a group of neurologic conditions that may share characteristics of MS but are being identified as discrete diseases. Patients may have radiologic findings consistent with MS but have symptoms that are not. Another distinguishing feature of MS mimickers is that standard MS treatments often fail. Although most such disorders are uncommon, their identification is of obvious clinical utility, and understanding them provides insights into CNS disease mechanisms shared across disease types.