Hospital admission due to infections in multiple sclerosis patients

Abstract

Higher hospital admission rates among MS patients for infection are likely to be due to a combination of surveillance bias, cautious medical management and greater susceptibility to severe infections. MS-related functional limitations may increase infection risk and this should be considered in MS management.

Multiple Sclerosis and Risk of Infection-Related Hospitalization and Death in US Veterans

“…Montgomery et al 6 did not control for therapy in their study; however, they suggest, based on the temporal variation of risk over 37 years of data, that therapy did not greatly influence their results. In contrast, the present multivariable regression analyses controlled for the number of immunosuppressive medications prescribed to each patient.…”

“…The present results are similar in direction but substantially smaller in magnitude compared with those found in these previous studies. Similar to this study, Montgomery et al 6 identified patients with infection-related hospital admissions from an MS patient registry in Sweden and matched those to Swedish residents who did not have MS and used Poisson regression to obtain the relative risk of infection for patients with and without MS.…”

“…2 MS is a chronic disease that results in an annual cost burden of $8500 to $54,000 per patient in the United States, much of it from complications secondary to MS. 3,4 Two recent studies have demonstrated an increased risk of infection-related hospitalizations and infectionrelated mortality in patients with MS compared with those without MS in Sweden and the United Kingdom. 5,6 The objective of this study was to examine the risk of hospitalization and death due to infections in patients with and without MS in a cohort of US veterans.…”

COVID-19 in Teriflunomide-Treated Patients with Multiple Sclerosis

“…There are currentlỹ 20 FDA-approved disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) for the treatment of MS, each resulting in various forms of immunomodulation or immunosuppression. Previous studies have suggested that infections in MS patients are more likely to occur when receiving DMT, require hospitalization more frequently, and are associated with higher mortality than the general public [8][9][10]. Furthermore, systemic infections could trigger disease activity (MS relapse) or worsen pre-existing MS symptoms (pseudo-relapse) [11].…”

Recent advances in neurology 2013–2014

“…Multiple sclerosis is considered the prototypic neuro‐inflammatory disease. It is now recognized to have a significant genetic component, although no single gene mutations have been identified, so again this is likely to be a complex genetic influence on risk.…”