title: Preliminary study on patients located at the Kashani/Isfahan Hospital with multiple sclerosis between the years 2011 and 2013.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a multifactorial disease that could result from demyelination of the myelin sheath. The aim of this study is to investigate the demographic features and rank the immunomodulating drugs in patients with MS.
  
  
  METHODS
  This study was conducted in the MS clinic of the Isfahan Kashani Hospital, from 22 May, 2011 to 18 March, 2013. The data analyses (n = 1067) were divided into two periods: (1) 2011/05/22 to 2012/03/18 denoted as P1 and (2) 2012/04/02 to 2013/03/18 denoted as P2.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Most of drugs prescribed within the population studied were: Avonex, Betaferone, and Rebif. There was an increase in the number of female (n = 811) and male subjects (n = 256). During P1/P2 there was an increase from 460 to 607 in the total number of patients, respectively. The number of patients who attended the MS clinic once was 250 (P1) versus 430 (P2), and those more than four times was 71 (P1) versus 59 (P2) correspondingly.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The number of females increased from 2011 to 2013. Because of dissimilar ingredients additive of different pharmaceutical companies, it could be suggested that pharmacotherapy strategies, especially in Iranian population of MS with first-line treatment using Avonex, Betaferone and Rebif, more spotlighted on inter- and intra-individual variability based on clinical pharmacokinetics parameters.
authors.affiliation: Neurosciences Research Center, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.
authors.forename: Zahra
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Tolou-Ghamari
authors.affiliation: Neurosciences Research Center, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran ; Department of Neurology, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.
authors.forename: Fereshteh
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ashtari
authors.affiliation: Neurosciences Research Center, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran ; Department of Neurology, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.
authors.forename: Vahid
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Shaygannejad
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Biochemistry, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran.
authors.forename: Abbas-Ali
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Palizban
keywords: Demographic; methylprednisolone; multiple sclerosis; pharmacokinetics; pharmacotherapy