COMPARING NEURAL FATIGUE BETWEEN FOUR TYPES OF PATIENTS WITH MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS

The aim of the present study was to compare neural fatigue between four types of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS).

Materials & Methods: In a retrospective method with an accidental sampling we chose 176 M.S. patients between all patients presenting to M.S clinic in Alzahra hospital in Isfahan city, during October 2009 to May 2010. They were then divided into four groups, including clinically isolated syndrome (CIS), relapsing remitting MS (RR MS), secondary progressive MS (SPMS), and primary progressive MS (PP MS). Data gathering tools were MS Neuropsychological Screening Questionnaire (MSNQ) for patient and three subscales of Modified Fatigue Impact Scale (MFIS). The data were analyzed using SPSS.

Results: The findings from covarriate and multivariate analysis showed that there was a significant difference between the centroids of the neural fatigue in four subtypes of patients with multiple sclerosis (p < 0.0001).

Conclusion: Since the main complaint of MS patients is chronic fatigue with negative emotion, it was with analyzing this factor that we could help these patients more effectively. Degenerative features like neural fatigue in MS patients can produce many problems for these patients and their families, so neuropsychology tries to comprehend these reflexes and is seeking for effective treatment to reduce these symptoms. Neural fatigue appraisal with simple and in handed instrument is one of the effective approaches to help these patients.