Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Prevalence of Multiple Sclerosis in Bogotá, Colombia

2006; Karger Publishers; Volume: 28; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1159/000097854

1423-0208

Jaime Toro, Olga L. Sarmiento, Adriana Díaz del Castillo, Claudia L. Satizábal, Jhon Darwin Ramírez, Ana Cristina de Albuquerque Montenegro, María Carolina Góngora, Jairo Quiñones, Andrés Díaz-Campos, Alejandro Tobón,

Systemic Sclerosis and Related Diseases

Among Latin American countries, Colombia is considered a low-risk area for multiple sclerosis (MS) and no studies on MS prevalence have been conducted in any of the country’s large urban settings. To fill this gap and assess the prevalence of MS in Bogotá as of December 31, 2002, this study reviewed the clinical records of patients diagnosed with MS in most Bogotá hospitals. This review produced a sample of 296 patients with an MS diagnosis whose reliability was verified by a neurologist with expertise in MS. The total prevalence rate identified for December 2002 was 4.41/100,000 inhabitants (95% CI 3.9–4.9), including a rate of 5.98/100,000 (95% CI 5.2–6.8) for women and 2.71/100,000 (95% CI 2.2–3.3) for men (differences measured at p < 0.001). The prevalence estimates for Bogotá, confirm the city’s status as a low-risk area for MS.