The relationship between sleep disorders with patients' demographic-clinical characteristics and quality of life in patients with multiple sclerosis

Objectives: In this study, the effect of sleep disturbance on the quality of life in MS patients and its relationship between demographic and clinical characteristics of the patients were investigated. Methods: 67 MS patients and 51 healthy individuals were included in our study. The patient group consisted of 43 women and 24 men. The control group consisted of 32 women and 19 men. Demographic and clinical charac-teristics of the patients; age, gender, duration of illness, annual number of attacks, treatments, and medical history were recorded and neurological examinations of all patients were performed and disability was deter-mined for each patient with Kurtzke's expanded disability status scale (EDSS). Evaluations were made using demographic data, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, Epworth Sleepiness Scale, Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS), Fatigue Severity Scale, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Berlin Questionnaire and Multiple Sclerosis Quality of Life (MSYK) -54 Instrument. Results: We found that the quality of life was significantly impaired in MS patients compared to healthy controls (p < 0.001). And we found that this was related to the presence of progressive MS and chronic fatigue among the clinical features of the patient, sleep-disordered breathing among sleep disorders, poor sleep quality, comorbid anxiety and depression (p = 0.001, p:0.009, p = 0.022, p = 0.007, p < 0.001 and p = 0.001, respectively). Conclusion: All these findings show that sleep disorders in patients with MS are a condition that should be questioned and treated in the follow up of the disease, otherwise it may affect the quality of life of patients negatively.