Quality of life among young patients with ischaemic stroke compared with patients with multiple sclerosis

Abstract

We aimed to evaluate the quality of life among young ischaemic stroke (IS) patients at long-term follow-up by comparing them with multiple sclerosis (MS) patients with secondary progressive course. The mean age at stroke onset was 41.6 years. Nottingham Health Profile scores were obtained from 191 IS patients 6 years (mean) after the index stroke, from 337 MS patients 5 years (mean) after the onset of the secondary progressive course and from 216 controls. The mean age of IS patients was 47.8 years and MS patients 44.5 years at follow-up. The MS patients as a group had worse subscores than the IS patients. When adjusting for physical mobility, complaints of fatigue (P = 0.012) were more frequent among MS patients, whereas pain (P < 0.001) and sleep (P = 0.007) disturbances were more frequent among IS patients. The comparison of IS and MS patients highlights the importance of pain and sleep disturbances among IS patients when adjusting for physical mobility.