Searching for the “Active Ingredients” in Physical Rehabilitation Programs Across Europe, Necessary to Improve Mobility in People With Multiple Sclerosis: A Multicenter Study

Background. Physical rehabilitation programs can lead to improvements in mobility in people with multiple sclerosis (PwMS). Objective: Identify which rehabilitation program elements are employed in real life and how they might impact mobility improvement in PwMS. Methods. Participants were divided into improved and non-improved mobility groups based on changes observed in the Multiple Sclerosis Walking Scale-12 following multimodal physical rehabilitation programs. Analyses were performed at group and subgroup (mild and moderate-severe disability) levels. Rehabilitation program elements included: setting; number of weeks; number of sessions; total duration, therapy format (individual, group, autonomous), therapy goals and therapeutic approaches. Results. The study comprised 279 PwMS from 17 European centers. PwMS in the improved group received more sessions of individual therapy in both subgroups. In the mildly disabled group, 60.9% of the improved received resistance training, whereas, 68.5% of the non-improved, received self-stretching. In the moderatelyseverely disabled group, 31.4% of the improved, received aerobic training, while 50.4% of the non-improved, received passive mobilization/stretching. Conclusions. We believe that our findings are an important step in opening the black-box of physical rehabilitation, imparting guidance and assisting future research in defining characteristics of effective physical rehabilitation

A Nineteenth-Century National Prussian Macroseismic Questionnaire

We recently discovered in the regional record office of North Rhine-Westphalia (Landesarchiv Nordrhein Westfalen) in Duisburg (Germany) numerous original documents organized and distributed during the nineteenth century by the Prussian authority. These documents constitute a series of completed surveys very similar to present-day macroseismic questionnaires that were ostensibly used to gather information about felt earthquakes in the Kingdom of Prussia. This article presents an overview of these documents and discusses their importance for broadening the knowledge base of nineteenth-century earthquakes in this part of Europe. Indeed, for some earthquakes, answers to the questionnaires furnish original historical sources that were never scientifically exploited; for other earthquakes, the surveys formed the basic source of information, utilized but not referenced in two nineteenth-century scientific studies. Detailed examination of a small sample from these historical documents definitively demonstrates the necessity for a reevaluation of the nineteenth-century earthquakes

A Nineteenth-Century National Prussian Macroseismic Questionnaire

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