29 Year Old Man with Multiple Sclerosis and Schizophrenia: A Case Report

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most common debilitating neurological disease that affects adults, whether young adults or middle-aged. Although, most attention is toward the neurological signs of the disease, the neuropsychiatric signs are not uncommon. This case report presents a 29 year old male with a record of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) without psychotic disorder, which coincides with the diagnosis MS, has been stricken to auditory hallucinations and reference delusion. The patient received some antipsychotic drugs such as Haloperidol and Perphenazine irregularly, but any psychotic signs of the patient were never in control. During this period he had several active episodes of MS disease, wherein the symptoms had subsided due to hospitalization and received corticosteroids pulse. The first time the patient was submitted to the emergency unit of Rasoul Akram Hospital, there was the possibility of schizophrenia which was confirmed in subsequent visits. The signs of the patient were not controllable for a long time and finally fully controlled by a combination of Aripiprazole (abilizol), Risperidone and Sertraline, and currently, for almost 3 years, both psychotic symptoms and MS disease have been under control. Our patient seems to catch the MS disease and schizophrenia simultaneously. There was no relation between MS and psychosis episodes and the MS attacks. Since the onset the patient had several acute MS attacks of MS, and hospitalization several times. These findings and characteristics regarding our patient made him completely different from other reported cases of MS along with neuropsychiatric signs which may help doctors in diagnosis and managment of similar cases.