Epidemiological Survey of Multiple Sclerosis in East-Azerbaijan Province, Iran, 2014

Abstract

Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) as a chronic disease of the central nervous system have the very prevalent in worldwide. Its epidemiology is different region by region, and most of the geographical and environmental factors may play a role in its incidence. We designed this study to analyze demographic characteristics of MS. Methods: This survey has been conducted in East-Azerbaijan province, northwest of Iran. Prevalence of the MS has been measured using data from Committee for Diagnosis and Treatment of MS in 2014. Age, gender, and type of the disease also had been investigated in this research. Independent T-Test, Chi-square, Pearson and Fisher's exact test used to analyze data by SPSS21. Results: We had 2774 MS patients in 2014. Of them, 726 (26%) were male and 2003 (73%) were female. The mean age of males and females was 38±9 years and 37.09±9 years, respectively. The mean age of male patients significantly was higher than females (P=0.001). We measured 73.26 prevalence per 100000 populations in East-Azerbaijan province. Conclusion: Prevalence of the MS showed a significant increase in 5 years compared to previous studies. Because of disease's dishabilitating entity more interventional investigations are recommended to perform in preventing disease incidence or improving the quality of life of sufferers and increasing their life expectancy.

Epidemiology of multiple sclerosis in Iran: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Finally, 39 articles (included 103 studies for prevalence and 34 studies for incidence) entered the meta-analysis process after qualitative assessment. The flow diagram of the identification and selection of studies is illustrated in (Fig 1) and the characteristics of studies are shown in (Table 1) [2, 5, 13, 25, 26, 31–37, 39, 40, 42–46, 53–71].…”

Economic burden of multiple sclerosis: a cross-sectional study in Iran

“…The results of a meta-analysis in 2020 demonstrated that during 1985–2018, the prevalence of the disease in Iran had increased by 2.30% annually [ 10 ]. Also, studies conducted in the country represented that the following provinces had the highest prevalence rates of MS: Tehran ( n = 148.06 per 100,000 in 2018) [ 11 ], Isfahan ( n = 85.80 per 100,000 in 2014) [ 12 ], and East Azerbaijan ( n = 73.26 per 100,000 in 2014) [ 13 ]. Besides, the results of a study conducted in Fars province in 2015 showed that this province had high prevalence and incidence rates among the provinces of the country, the former was 72.10 and the latter was 5.20 per 100,000 [ 14 ].…”