Multiple Sclerosis Clinic in Iraq, an Endeavourforan Unraveling Database

Abstract

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most common disabling neurologic condition of young adults after trauma. The establishing of an unraveling database carries a potentially important role in clarifying the nature of the disease in Iraq. This study had been designed to find the frequency distribution of MS patients according to different demographic variables like the age at onset, age at diagnosis, gender and place of birth and residence, etc, to estimate the frequency of different neurological symptoms and signs in patients with MS, to estimate the frequency of different clinical types of MS in Iraqi patients and assessing the differences between different clinical types of MS in regard to gender, age at onset, age at diagnosis, the diagnostic delay, disease duration and the EDSS, accordingly. This retrospective study was carried out at the Multiple Sclerosis Clinic, Medical City in Baghdad/lraq. The medical files of 900 MS patients were thoroughly revised; they included all patients who had attended the MS Clinic from the day of establishment of the clinic at 2001 to the end of February 2006. Six hundreds seventy six (676) patients were considered as MS patients fulfilling the Poser's criteria and continued visiting the clinic for follow up and treatment. Patient's distribution according to the clinical type of their MS was RRMS= 67.3%, PPMS= 19.1%, SPMS= 13.6% , main age distribution of this sample was between 30-39 years (39.3%).,Females were 64.9%, males were 35.1%.,Age of onset was mainly between 20-29 years of age regardless of the gender or type of MS, Diagnostic delay was mainly between 1-3 years, Distribution according to place of birth was seen mainly in 3 geographical clusters in Iraq, Motor symptoms were the commonest experienced by the patients (95.7%). This study had shown that during the last 2 decades, MS was increasingly encountered in Iraq, particularly during the last 5 years after the establishment of MS clinic in Baghdad, MS cases in Iraq distributed in a three-main-clusters pattern rather than North-South gradient, primary progressive MS showed a more even gender distribution and older age at onset with the shortest diagnostic delay.