Data monitoring roadmap. The experience of the Italian Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders Register

Introduction Over the years, disease registers have been increasingly considered a source of reliable and valuable population studies. However, the validity and reliability of data from registers may be limited by missing data, selection bias or data quality not adequately evaluated or checked.This study reports the analysis of the consistency and completeness of the data in the Italian Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders Register.MethodsThe Register collects, through a standardized Web-based Application, unique patients.Data are exported bimonthly and evaluated to assess the updating and completeness, and to check the quality and consistency. Eight clinical indicators are evaluated.ResultsThe Register counts 77,628 patients registered by 126 centres. The number of centres has increased over time, as their capacity to collect patients.The percentages of updated patients (with at least one visit in the last 24 months) have increased from 33% (enrolment period 2000-2015) to 60% (enrolment period 2016-2022). In the cohort of patients registered after 2016, there were >= 75% updated patients in 30% of the small centres (33), in 9% of the medium centres (11), and in all the large centres (2).Clinical indicators show significant improvement for the active patients, expanded disability status scale every 6 months or once every 12 months, visits every 6 months, first visit within 1 year and MRI every 12 months.ConclusionsData from disease registers provide guidance for evidence-based health policies and research, so methods and strategies ensuring their quality and reliability are crucial and have several potential applications

"Postural strategies assessed with inertial sensors in healthy and Parkinson subjects" by C. Baston et al. [Gait Posture 40 (2014) 70-75]: Really a new method to analyze postural strategy?

We read with great interest the article by Baston et al. [1] published in Gait & Posture entitled ‘‘Postural strategies assessed with inertial sensors in healthy and Parkinsonian subjects’’. The article describes a novel instrumental method that records the movement of inertial sensors positioned on the legs and trunk, thereby providing analysis of the postural strategy (ankle or hip strategy) adopted to maintain balance during quiet and perturbed stance

Changes in color vision after a single dose of Vigabatrin or Carbamazepine in healthy volunteers

Impact Factor 1.94

Variation of visual evoked potential delay to stimulation of central, nasal, and temporal regions of the macula in optic neuritis

OBJECTIVES—To compare the degree of visual evoked potential (VEP) delay to stimulation of central, nasal, and temporal regions of the macula in optic neuritis, to determine whether the differential involvement of parvocellular and magnocellular fibre types suggested by other studies is governed by retinotopic factors.
METHODS—VEPs were recorded to reversal of 40' checks in the central (4° radius) and the left and right surrounding regions of the visual field (as far as 10° vertical and 14° horizontal) in 30patients recently recovered from the acute stage of optic neuritis, and in 17 age matched controls.
RESULTS—In the control group, VEP latencies were similar to stimulation of the central and temporal regions of the macula, marginally shorter from the nasal region. In the patients with optic neuritis, VEPs were significantly more delayed from the central region, on average by about twice as much as from the nasal and temporal regions. Delays seen in some of the VEPs from the patients' fellow eyes tended to be more uniformly distributed.
CONCLUSIONS—Although the central region of the macula is where the density of parvocellular innervation is greatest, there is no reason to suppose that the VEPs to stimulation of the nasal and temporal regions (almost all P100 activity arising from within the central 10°) are mediated by fibres of another type. Consequently it is suggested that the central fibres were most affected by demyelination, not on account of their belonging to the parvocellular type but because of their particular situation in the optic nerve. Centrally located fibres may experience greater exposure to factors causing demyelination, or fibres located closer to the edge of the plaque may undergo more effective remyelination in the first few weeks after the acute episode.


Testing chromaticity within the central visual field for daily clinical routine

In order to test the patient's visual sensitivity to colours stimulation within the central visual field, an ad-hoc instrumentation based on a personal computer has been realized