Epidemiological, demographical features and familial frecuency of the patients with multiple sclerosis followed in region Elaziğ

Multiple sclerosis is an inflamatory and demyelinative disease, described 150 years ago. Most of the cases of multiple sclerosis have their onset between 20 and 40 years of age. It is chracterized with recurrent and/or progresive white matter lesions of central nervous system. It will appear with different clinical manifastations. Multiple sclerosis is one of the mostly reasons of disability in young adults after trauma.The aim of our study is to evaluate the age of onset, clinical manifestations, frequency of subgroups, clinical progression, the differences of subgroups, and familial frequency in patients with multiple sclerosis. We also evalueted the role of expanded disability status scale score in neurological follow up .A case - controlled epidemiological, demographical features and familial frequency study of multiple sclerosis (MS) was carried out in region Elazığ, for the period January 1997 to December 2007. All patients known to have definite MS according to 2005 Revisions to the McDonald's criteria, alive, resident with in region Elazığ were included in the study. Demographic and case-related information were recorded from Neurology Department of Fırat University of Medicine database.We invastigated the epidemiplogıcal, demographical features and familial frequency of 121 patient with multiple sclerosis, followed to Neurology Department of Fırat University of Medicine. 30.6 % of the total patients were male and 69.4 % of them were female. The female-to-male sex ratio was 2.27:1 The mean age of onset was 30.41 ± 9.4 years, 30.80. ± 9.6 for female and 29.84 ± 8.9 for male. Mean duration of disease was 8.00 ± 5.9 years, 8.37 ± 7.2 for men and 7.83 ±5.2 years for women. In our study, mostly seen initial symptom were motor weakness and sensorial. Disease course was defined as relapsing-remitting course in 54.5 % of patients, secondary progressive in 28%, primary progressive in 12.3% and bening course in 4.9 % of patients. We was recorded familial multiple sclerosis frequency in 11, 5 %.We also used EDSS to Evaluated and folow up the patient. Initial EDSS score and last vizit EDSS score were measured in all patients.Mean initial EDSS score of the patients with PPMS were found statistically higher than the score of the patients with RRMS and SPMS (p<0, 001). Primary progressive disease was correlated positively with male sex and motor symptoms at onset, unlike RRMS and SPMS (p<0.001). RRMS and PPMS cases shared similar age at disease onset. Disease duration was twice as long in secondary progressive than in relapsing?remitting cases ( p<0.001).According to Kurtzke?s EDSS (score of the last vizit ) 61.2 % of patients showed no or minimal to moderate disability (EDSS 0-3), 24.8 % suffered from a severe disability, which did not however interfere with normal living activities (EDSS 4-5), and 14 % required partial or complete assitance (EDSS 6-9).