Improving Quality of Life in Multiple Sclerosis

Recently, I arrived in the United Kingdom and headed north to the city of Liverpool.  While I’m a fan of The Beatles and a passionate Liverpool Football Club supporter in the Premier League, I had other motivations for visiting.  In particular, I was excited about getting the opportunity to meet Professor Carolyn Young, Consultant Neurologist at The Walton Centre.  

Over the course of a couple of hours (and a couple of quite good flat whites), Professor Young proceeded to tell me about her journey through the clinical and academic world.  I had heard of Professor Young’s work through publications that had come out of her major project, the Trajectories of Outcome in Neurological Conditions (TONiC) study.  As an example of this, I wrote an article for the Multiple Sclerosis Limited Intouch eNewsletter, in November 2018, that summarised findings from part of the TONiC study.  This part of the project aimed to identify coping strategies in people living with multiple sclerosis, and whether there were patterns to the groups of people that were more likely to benefit from some methods over others.  You can read the full article here.

To provide the background to the TONic study, it is described online as follows:

“TONiC is a national study examining the factors that influence quality of life in patients with neurological conditions. It is one of the largest studies on quality of life in neurological conditions ever performed in the UK”.

The basis for the study is that whilst there is a considerable amount of research being undertaken that investigates the causes of multiple sclerosis and/or seeks to find new treatments, very little work is being done to understand how best to improve the daily lives of people living with the condition.  Importantly, the TONiC study doesn’t just aim to identify the factors that impact on quality of life.  Instead, it goes beyond this to determine the pathways that lead to these factors and seeks to work out how they can be modified so that improvements can be made.

Excitingly, Professor Young invited me to join her and her team the next day at the Walton Centre and we proceeded to record a number of video interviews.  These will provide much more information about the background to the study, how it works, answers to frequently asked questions and potential outcomes that can be generated.  We look forward to sharing these with you in the future.

There is likely to be some other incredibly exciting news regarding this study that we will be able to tell you about soon, so stay tuned for that!  In the meantime, let us know what you think about this research by either commenting below, using the comments section under the corresponding post on our Facebook page or by e-mailing me directly here.  I look forward to hearing from you!

I’ve now left Liverpool and am continuing my journey throughout the UK and Europe in the lead-up to ECTRIMS.  I look forward to sharing more updates on this in the near future.

Until then,

Brett

MStranslate Co-founder &
Chief Science Communicator