Prevalence of sleep disorders in patients with multiple sclerosis

Background and Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system with the prevalence of about 2.5 million people worldwide; about half of these patients have reported having trouble in sleeping. This study aimed to investigate the rate of sleep disorders in patients with multiple sclerosis. This was a cross-sectional study on patients with multiple sclerosis in Kermanshah city, Iran, in 2011. Based on the list of MS society, 120 patients by convenient sampling were selected. Two-part questionnaire was used in this study; the first part was researcher-made questionnaire including demographic characteristics and the second part was Global Sleep Assessment (GSA) questionnaire, which validity and reliability have been confirmed to evaluate sleep disorders. The patient's mean age and mean disease duration was 34.68 ± 9.13 and 9.28 ± 5.57 years, respectively. From 120 samples, 32 (26.7%) were men and 88 (73.3%) were women. More than 87 percent of the subjects suffered from sleep problems and the most frequent problems were anxiety, sleep onset, and sleep continuity. Individual's characteristics such as gender, marital status, educational level, employment status, and type of illness had a profound impact on certain types of sleep-related disorders. The results of this study indicate that the majority of people with with multiple sclerosis somehow involved with sleep-related problems. This problem can severely affect daily activities, social relationships and overall quality of life.