MS Body Type?

[Kronk]

Odd study but the statistical significance they found was undeniable. Women with MS are tall and skinny, Men with MS are tall. I am 6'3" my parent were 5'8 and 5'2. I also have 11% bodyfat, but I been on a powerlifting regimen at the gym for a year.

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn/2013/981070/

"...An intriguing finding of this study is that body height of patients with MS tends to be greater than that of controls..."
"...Lower BMI was found in female MS patients compared to female controls, more pronounced in RRMS. BMI was not associated with duration of illness, smoking, present or previous drug treatment, or disability score..."

[stiti]

I'm a man really small 5'7" and I have MS!

[Kronk]

It is a strange study just thought i would post because it was interesting. And of course there are exceptions to anything, they didn't list ALL people with MS are tall...

Another odd thing is that they said childhood obesity was a risk factor, but during RRMS phase peoples BMI dropped significantly.

[Scott1]

I really don't like that study at all. It looks like they fitted the data to suit the findings. Adolescent weight without a proper longitudinal study could be used to show anything. I hope they were paid, but not too much.

[Kronk]

I really don't like that study at all. It looks like they fitted the data to suit the findings. Adolescent weight without a proper longitudinal study could be used to show anything. I hope they were paid, but not too much.

I dont see how you drew that conclusion, and paid by who? They arent selling any drugs. The study clearly showed a lower BMI for females and an above average height for the majority of pwMS. Take it or leave it. But I dont see the point of calling foul. This isnt the first study to call out physical characteristics and susceptability to MS.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9839742
"...In addition, taller women showed a greater risk for MS..."

[NHE]

It is a strange study just thought i would post because it was interesting. And of course there are exceptions to anything, they didn't list ALL people with MS are tall...

Another odd thing is that they said childhood obesity was a risk factor, but during RRMS phase peoples BMI dropped significantly.

I'm 5'6". I've never been obese. My BMI is in the low end of normal.

[Scott1]

Apart from anecdotal evidence that I see that doesn't fit (as others are noting similarly) it's all based on self reporting and I think the sample is very small. They say the samples all coming from one clinic improves the data quality. It's just too subjective. They use a narrow sample of middle aged subjects without justifying what's wrong with a broader cohort. The sample could all be from Tonga, Alaska, Greece or Timbuktu.

"A limitation of the current study is the self-reported weight and height that may not be accurate. This issue has been thoroughly studied by Stommel and Schoenborn [28]. They found that deviations of the self-reported from measured BMI values depend on many sociodemographic characteristics, among them sex and age. The most accurate values are obtained from middle-aged subjects, and deviations are greater at the high and low ends of the BMI scale. Importantly, self-reported and measured height and weight were highly correlated. The above mentioned factors are expected to apply for both patients and controls of the present case-control study and, taking also into account the high correlation between self-reported and measured values, are not expected to influence our results. We consider that the reliability of our results is increased by using as controls subjects presenting to the same neurology clinic during the same time period (several years). In addition, the results of the present study can be better compared to other studies that used also self-reported data for BMI [3, 9–13]. "

[PointsNorth]

Smells like an ectomorph conspiracy to me! c/w alien DNA.

[jerrygallow]

wait, not that I'm an expert on this subject, but it seems like I've read that obesity is linked to MS. Now we're saying pwMS are skinny? I know I have always been skinny. A male at 6'1. I wonder if this is just an association with northern European ancestry. I have tall aunts.

[Leonard]

I recognise what is said.

I think it is the virus that is affecting the gut and the metabolism, the ADP - ATP conversion etc. see e.g. http://www.thisisms.com/forum/general-d ... 15188.html

This will start many years, even decades, before diagnosed with the disease.

Probably there is already an increased viral load as measured by the immune complexes very early on.

It would be interesting to see whether such things as mononucleosis have occured more frequently in patients that develop immune disease later on.

[DrGeoff]

I am with Scott on this one - the statistical approach looked very suspect to me. So then I re-read it and thought the whole approach was just a little bit odd.
When you get into it, you find that the subjects were described as:
"Duration of illness ranged from 0.1 to 480 months, and score in the Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) ranged from zero to 6.0."
To me, this means that some subjects had a Dx of CIS or MS for about 3 DAYS, and some for 40 YEARS. The EDSS range is from 0 (no problem at all), to 6.0 (0.5 short of needing two canes or a rollator to walk).

This covers a whole range of ages, length of Dx, and ability to exercise - and it is not surprising to find differences in BMI under those conditions. The obvious statistical approach would be to use MANOVA (Multiple Analysis of Variance) and look at the "Within Subjects Factors". In simple terms this weights each factor against each other factor in the presence of the remaining factors Read further on and they divided EDSS up into categories - of which one ended at 6.5

To me, that is just a little bit inconsistent. Either you stop at EDSS 6.0 or at EDSS 6.5. Not both.
But don't just take my view on this; read the EDSS on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_D ... atus_Scale
and make up your own mind.

Geoff