Correlation of multiple sclerosis incidence in the UK 1990-2010 with geomagnetic disturbances

We read with the great interest the recent article by Mackenzie et al. reporting incidence and prevalence of multiple sclerosis (MS) in the UK 1990-2010 (1). Beyond the various advantages of such descriptive studies about the epidemiology of MS, the most important and useful aspect of this study, in our opinion, is determination of long-time MS incidence trend. However, MS epidemiology is studied frequently to find clues about possible environmental risk factors, longtime reports of its annual incidence for consecutive years are relatively rare. While, such incidence trend reports provide valuable opportunity to test the ability of risk factor hypothesis in describing the alterations of disease incidence, it seems that one of the causes of the rarity of such reports in publication may be the fact that often-cited hypotheses like vitamin D deficiency hypothesis and chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency (CCSVI) cannot explain MS incidence trends.