Contributions
Abstract: P330
Type: Poster
Abstract Category: Clinical aspects of MS - MS symptoms
Objectives: To compare self-reported symptom severity in patients with NMO and gender-, race-, age- and disease duration- matched MS controls using symptoMScreen, an in-house developed tool for multi-dimensional symptom assessment.
Background: NMO and MS are distinct neuro-inflammatory disorders with overlapping symptomatology. SymptoMScreen is a validated battery of 7-point Likert scales for assessing symptom severity in 12 neurologic domains: mobility, dexterity, spasticity, body pain, sensation, bladder function, vision, fatigue, vision, dizziness, cognition, depression, and anxiety. SymptoMScreen has been validated for MS populations, but not for NMO.
Methods: NMO and MS patients seen in NYU MS Care Center (New York) completed the symptoMScreen at each clinic visit. Every NMO patient was matched 1:2 with MS patients on age (+/- 1 year), gender, race, and disease duration (+/- 1 year), except for 1 NMO patient who only yielded one MS match. Symptom severity in each of the 12 symptoMScreen domains was compared using matched-samples t-tests; p< 0.05 was considered significant.
Results: There were 43 NMO patients in our cohort, with mean age 51 +/- 14.4 years and mean disease duration of 11.1 +/- 8.8 years. The matching 85 MS patients had very similar mean age (51.2 +/- 14.7 years) and mean disease duration (11.2 +/- 8.1 years). In both groups, gender was 97% female and racial distribution was: 46% African-American, 33% Hispanic-American, 15% White-American, 5% Asian and 1% other. Of the 12 symptoMScreen domains, significant differences between NMO and MS were observed in only 4 domains. Vision and bladder symptoms were significantly worse in NMO as compared to MS (p=0.03 for both domains), while cognition (p< .001) and anxiety (p=0.03) were significantly worse in MS patients. No significant differences were observed in the remaining 8 domains, though there were trends for worse spasticity and pain in NMO (p=0.06) and worse depression in MS (p=0.07).
Conclusions: SymptoMScreen is a useful screening tool to assess symptom severity in NMO as in MS, and identifies relevant clinical differences between the two diseases. Worse self-reported vision in NMO compared to MS is an expected finding, and worse bladder function likely reflects more severe cord damage in NMO than MS, which may also explain trends for worse spasticity and pain in NMO. Better cognition and anxiety scores in NMO may be due to the relative sparing of cerebrum in this disease relative to MS.
Disclosure: The authors have no disclosures to report as the research was carried out using authors own resources.
Abstract: P330
Type: Poster
Abstract Category: Clinical aspects of MS - MS symptoms
Objectives: To compare self-reported symptom severity in patients with NMO and gender-, race-, age- and disease duration- matched MS controls using symptoMScreen, an in-house developed tool for multi-dimensional symptom assessment.
Background: NMO and MS are distinct neuro-inflammatory disorders with overlapping symptomatology. SymptoMScreen is a validated battery of 7-point Likert scales for assessing symptom severity in 12 neurologic domains: mobility, dexterity, spasticity, body pain, sensation, bladder function, vision, fatigue, vision, dizziness, cognition, depression, and anxiety. SymptoMScreen has been validated for MS populations, but not for NMO.
Methods: NMO and MS patients seen in NYU MS Care Center (New York) completed the symptoMScreen at each clinic visit. Every NMO patient was matched 1:2 with MS patients on age (+/- 1 year), gender, race, and disease duration (+/- 1 year), except for 1 NMO patient who only yielded one MS match. Symptom severity in each of the 12 symptoMScreen domains was compared using matched-samples t-tests; p< 0.05 was considered significant.
Results: There were 43 NMO patients in our cohort, with mean age 51 +/- 14.4 years and mean disease duration of 11.1 +/- 8.8 years. The matching 85 MS patients had very similar mean age (51.2 +/- 14.7 years) and mean disease duration (11.2 +/- 8.1 years). In both groups, gender was 97% female and racial distribution was: 46% African-American, 33% Hispanic-American, 15% White-American, 5% Asian and 1% other. Of the 12 symptoMScreen domains, significant differences between NMO and MS were observed in only 4 domains. Vision and bladder symptoms were significantly worse in NMO as compared to MS (p=0.03 for both domains), while cognition (p< .001) and anxiety (p=0.03) were significantly worse in MS patients. No significant differences were observed in the remaining 8 domains, though there were trends for worse spasticity and pain in NMO (p=0.06) and worse depression in MS (p=0.07).
Conclusions: SymptoMScreen is a useful screening tool to assess symptom severity in NMO as in MS, and identifies relevant clinical differences between the two diseases. Worse self-reported vision in NMO compared to MS is an expected finding, and worse bladder function likely reflects more severe cord damage in NMO than MS, which may also explain trends for worse spasticity and pain in NMO. Better cognition and anxiety scores in NMO may be due to the relative sparing of cerebrum in this disease relative to MS.
Disclosure: The authors have no disclosures to report as the research was carried out using authors own resources.