Relationship Between Exercise Duration in Multimodal Telerehabilitation and Quality of Sleep in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a telerehabilitation system on the quality of sleep in patients with multiple sclerosis (PwMS). Fifteen females and two males (60.1 ± 11.4 years) who used the system for three months completed the Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) at the baseline and end of follow-up. Total System Usage (TSU) and Total Exercise Time (TET) were elucidated from the system web logs for each PwMS. A significant association (p<0.05) was found between PSQI sleep efficiency (SE) and TSU (0.76) and between SE and TET (0.81). The association between PSQI total score (TS) and TSU and between TS and TET were -0.507 and -0.702 respectively (p<0.05). Our results uncovered an association between amount of exercise time spent by PwMS and positive effects on both the efficiency and quality of sleep. Thus, further development of approaches promoting continuous participation of PwMS in telerehabilitation is warranted.