Multiple sclerosis and immunological-related risk factors: results from a case-control study

Multiple sclerosis is a demyeliting autoimmune inflammatory disorder of central nervous system (CNS) with unknown etiology, which afflicts more than 2.5 millions of the world's population. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between some immunological-related risk factors (tonsillectomy, appendectomy and hepatitis B vaccination) and multiple sclerosis in 2014 in Hamadan city, west of Iran.

As a case-control study, data of filled questionnaire with written consents from 250 patients and 250 age and sex matched controls, were collected and analyzed using SPSS version 16 software and Logistic regression test.

In both groups, the case and the control, with average age of 33 years, 70% of the participants were women. Statistical analysis showed that there was no significant association between tonsillectomy and appendectomy with the multiple sclerosis (p > 0.05). Also hepatitis B vaccination did not increase the risk of MS significantly (p > 0.05), although there was a trend toward more vaccination rate in the patients.

Considering previous global investigations on this topic with the result of our study, it seems more studies are needed to determine the definitive association between tonsillectomy, appendectomy and hepatitis B vaccination with multiple sclerosis.