Will I Die from Multiple Sclerosis?

There is a short life span, its small, its really only about 10%. In fact, the recent studies show that people who start at least some of the disease modifying therapies early tend to have a longer lifespan than those who don't start disease modifying therapies, like the interferons. The deaths in MS typically occurs when people have, for example MS involvement of the brain stem, and they can't swallow and they choke, that sort of thing. Uncommon but it does happen occasionally.

More commonly its people who have severe disease did not get the chance to be treated because they weren't available when they got diagnosed. Medication like the interferons or the other drugs that we talked about, and they had severe disability and they have the complications of generalized neurological disorder, like those who have severe end stage spinal chord injury for example, or people who have Alzheimer disease and so on.
Unfortunately, another relatively common cause of death in MS is suicide, and it doesn't really correlate with the degree of disability at all. More often it correlates with their ability to cope, and what they grew up with and what kind of coping skills they have.