MSA and the Neapolitan Ice Cream Analogy
by Pam Bower
Think of MSA as the 3 flavoured ice cream called Neapolitan which has
vanilla, chocolate and strawberry all mixed together. Imagine if you
took one scoop of that ice cream and put it in a dish, then took
another scoop and put it in another dish and compared the two dishes.
You would notice that there is not the exact same amount of vanilla,
chocolate and strawberry in both of the dishes.
Multiple System Atrophy is the same as the Neapolitan ice cream.
There are three flavours included in MSA:
1. Shy-Drager Syndrome (SDS) – Think of it as the strawberry ice cream
2. Olivopontocerebellar atrophy (OPCA) – Think of it as the vanilla
ice cream
3. Striatonigral Degeneration (SND) – Think of it as the chocolate
ice cream
Whether someone is told they have SDS or OPCA or SND they all have
one scoop of Neapolitan ice cream in their dish. They all have
Multiple System Atrophy.
If their symptoms are mainly orthostatic hypotension or urinary
incontinence they have mostly strawberry ice cream in their dish
(SDS). If their symptoms are mainly cerebellar ataxia they have
mostly vanilla ice cream in their dish (OPCA). If their symptoms are
mainly tremors they have mostly chocolate ice cream in their dish
(SND). If they have all of the above symptoms then they might have
nearly equal amounts of chocolate, strawberry and vanilla in their
dish.