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Addressing health-related quality of life is considered a desirable component of routine care for patients with multiple sclerosis. However, use of available health-related quality of life surveys is not part of routine multiple sclerosis care, possibly due to administration, scoring, and interpretation challenges presented by available questionnaires. The 25-item Functional Index for Living with Multiple Sclerosis (FILMS) questionnaire was developed and validated to allow providers to monitor and easily apply health-related quality of life information to the patient encounter. The development and pilot test processes and the results of the validation study are reported here. Convergent validity, internal consistency reliability, and test-retest reproducibility were evaluated. Strong correlations of Functional Index for Living with Multiple Sclerosis subscales with control questionnaires were demonstrated by Pearson's correlation coefficients from 0.73 to 0.88. Internal consistency reliabilities ranged from 0.80 to 0.90, demonstrating that items were grouped into the appropriate subscale domains and that the subscale domains and the questionnaire as a whole exhibited good directionality. Test-retest reproducibility was 0.91. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Purpose: GM volume, WMH volume, and FA are each associated with cognition; however, few studies have detected whether these 3 different types of MR imaging measurements exert independent or additive effects on cognitive performance. To detect their extent of contribution to cognitive performance, we explored the independent and additive contributions of GM atrophy, white matter injury, and white matter integrity to cognition in elderly patients., Materials and Methods: Two hundred and 9 elderly patients participated in the study: 97 were CN adults, 65 had MCI, and 47 had dementia. We measured GM on T1-weighted MR imaging, WMH on FLAIR, and FA on DTI, along with psychometrically matched measures of 4 domains of cognitive performance, including semantic memory, episodic memory, executive function, and spatial abilities., Results: As expected, patients with dementia performed significantly more poorly in all 4 cognitive domains, whereas patients with MCI performed generally less poorly than dementia patients, though considerable overlap in performance was present across groups. GM, FA, and WMH each differed significantly between diagnostic groups and were associated with cognitive measures. In multivariate models that included all 3 MR imaging measures (GM, WMH, and FA), GM volume was the strongest determinant of cognitive performance., Conclusions: These results strongly suggest that MR imaging measures of GM are more closely associated with cognitive function than WM measures across a broad range of cognitive and functional impairment.