The first phase of the study will take place at the National MS Center Melsbroek (NMSC). All data from the EDMUS database, a single center database at the NMSC, will be exported and checked (quantity, quality) aiming to come to a well-organized MS data structure. This MS register will be completed with volume data (intracranial, spinal canal) in a subset of patients. As a substantial number of MS patients are followed over the long-term in the MS center, the investigators expect to have longitudinal data well beyond a disease duration of 10 years at least for part of the patients. Following the export and cleaning phase of the data, the investigators will come to the basic descriptive statistics. This allows us to have an overview of all data and determine the most appropriate baseline variables or covariates as well as to define the most appropriate outcome variables. Multivariable regression analysis will be used to predict the value of outcome variables based on the independent variables whose values are known. In view of the relevance of age and disease duration in the context of MS disability and progression, time-to-event analysis will be performed, with the time to reach irreversible milestones of ambulatory disability as outcome.
In case of associations, the second phase of the study will be initiated for further analysis at the AIMS research group, VUB. At the AIMS group, VUB, the potential of false positive findings will be addressed using more sophisticated approaches (splitting cohorts in exploratory and discovery cohort, or cross-fold validation).
