'74-'75

Numbers and me – we're not friends.

I wasn't a fan of maths at school and am now reliving my fear of fractions through my ten-year-old daughter's increasingly complicated maths homework which seems to my rusty brain to be pitched somewhere between Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein.

And yes, I know we use maths every day and yes, there are numbers everywhere but as I picnic in our local park I don't generally calculate the height of trees from the length of shadow cast. (I'm trying for the life of me to dredge up what this process is called. Gah, can't remember. *Googles* Ah, proportional reasoning. Another fact to instantly forget.)

But you can't avoid the numbers game with MS – which for the purposes of this post I am renaming the Maths Shit.

For a start, there's the odds of developing it – research highlighted by the MS Trust tells me that in the general UK population about 1 in 600 people has MS.

To have developed it, you need to deal with more maths - there are currently more than 230 genes that have each been found to increase the risk of someone developing MS to a small degree. None of them directly causes the condition itself and someone with MS will have a combination of many of these genes.

Researchers have then calculated that genes contribute just over half (54%) of the risk factors. The remainder would probably be due to other environmental factors such as where you live, Vitamin D levels, infections or smoking. 

Then there's the maths of other people – or the chance of developing MS by relationship to someone with MS:

• Identical twin - 1 in 5
• Non-identical twin - 1 in 22
• Other siblings - 1 in 37
• Parent - 1 in 67

So I had a 1 in 600 chance of developing a disease which was itself dependent on a combination of 230 genes which in turn was dependent on two different percentages of two different types of risk factors. And this convoluted calculation has led to the very frightening prospect of having saddled my daughter with a 1 in 67 chance of developing the same disease.

And although that risk is still dependant on her own combination of genes and personal environmental risk factors, it remains a potential - a horrible, horrible mathematical inheritance. And provides proof, if any was needed, that numbers and me are never going to be friends.

:: Song '74-'75 by The Connells