The Effect of Fatigue and Pain Self- Efficacy on Health-Related Quality of Life Among Patients with Multiple Sclerosis

INTRODUCTION: Health-related quality of life is a major issue among patients with Multiple sclerosis (MS). AIM: To explore the effect of fatigue and pain self-efficacy on health-related quality of life among patients with MS. METHODS: Between March and May 2018, 85 MS patients from a large Hospital of Athens region completed the questionnaires: a) Missoula-VITAS Quality of Life Index-15, which examines 5 dimensions of quality of life, b) Pain Self Efficacy Questionnaire which measures the pain self-efficacy that an individual perceives, c) Fatigue Assessment Scale (FAS) which measures fatigue, d) a questionnaire about the sociodemographic elements. Statistical analysis was performed using the IBM SPSS Statistics version 21. The significance level was set up to 0.001. RESULTS: Fatigue might predict the dimension of quality of life “Function” while Pain Self-Efficacy might, also, predict the dimension of quality of life “Interpersonal”. A strong correlation was found between the dimensions of quality of life “Well-being” and “Transcendent” and between “Interpersonal” and Pain Self-Efficacy. The total score of fatigue was strongly correlated with Physical Fatigue and very strongly correlated with Mental Fatigue. CONCLUSION: Fatigue and Pain Self-Efficacy are important predictors of the dimensions of quality of life among patients with MS. Pain in MS has to be taken into serious consideration in every patient with MS.