Multiple Sclerosis in Fife

Abstract

Patients in Fife with multiple sclerosis were identified from three sources: a postal questionnaire to all general practices in Fife, hospital discharge data, rehabilitation service database. A total of 508 patients were identified in a population of 354,273 giving a crude prevalence rate of 143/100,000. The Standardised Prevalence Rate was 178/100,000. The sex ratio was 2.43 females to males. The prevalence was higher than identified in southern parts of the United Kingdom and similar to northern Scotland. A total of 200 (40%) cases were identified as having relapsing-remitting disease and of these 151 were ambulant, making them eligible for treatment with interferon beta-lb under current licensing criteria. Only 90 (60%) of the 151 currently eligible for the drug were under the care of a specialist and almost half the practices felt that they would change their referring habits. These factors may have implications for the workload of specialist clinics.

Factors in the rising prevalence of multiple sclerosis in the north-east of Ireland

“…The mean interval between onset of first symptom and diagnosis was 4.6 years with no significant difference with gender (male 4.87, female 4.46, P = 0.82). The mean duration of disease was 17.7 years (SD 12.2), with a median duration of 14 years (IQR [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25].…”

A new prevalence study of multiple sclerosis in Orkney, Shetland and Aberdeen city

“…Studies in the 1970s and 1980s found a similar increase in the prevalence in Aberdeen and north east Scotland, from 127/100 000 (95% CI 116 to 137) to 178/100 000 (95% CI 162 to 185)7–10 (figure 1). More recent studies in lowland Scotland revealed crude prevalence rates of 145/100 000 (95% CI 127 to 163) in Fife and Glasgow,11 12 187/100 000 (95% CI 178 to 195) in Borders and Lothian13 and 222/100 000 (95% CI 210 to 240) in Tayside 14…”

Realizing the Promise of Network-Centric Warefare

“…granted or withheld approval for tactical execution of a specific strike in Afghanistan. 37 Organizational orientation determines the degree of uncertainty a commander is willing to tolerate. Van Creveld declares that the history of warfare is an endless quest of decreasing the "realm of uncertainty, resulting in a race between more information and the ability of technology to keep up with it."…”