Family Planning in People With Multiple Sclerosis: A Plain Language Summary

Abstract

This is a plain language summary of an article originally published in the journal Frontiers in Neurology. People with multiple sclerosis (often shortened to MS) may have concerns about pregnancy and fertility. To understand more about these concerns, 332 people with MS in the USA, UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain took a survey with questions about how they made family planning decisions. Most of the survey participants (around 82%) were women. The survey found that people with MS were less likely to have children than people without MS. Over half (56%) of people with MS said the disease impacted their family planning decisions in some way, almost one quarter (22%) significantly changed their plans for the timing of their pregnancy or number of children, and 14% decided against having children. For almost 4 out of 5 (81%) people with MS the main source of family planning information was healthcare professionals. Overall, MS significantly impacted patients' decisions about family planning.

Male sexual and reproductive health in multiple sclerosis: a scoping review

“…Two cross-sectional studies focused on family planning [ 60 , 61 ] and both were based on original surveys. The first, based on 102 MwMS in Denmark, reported information about fetal risk with use of DMT was commonly obtained from MS treatment team (40% of respondents), but a majority of participants did not know if their current DMT had direct teratogenic effects (74%), or if DMT of male partners with MS may be associated with teratogenicity in case of conception with a female partner without MS [ 61 ].…”