The Orient Express To MS

Background: The MS support nurse team evaluated the observation that out of their combined caseload they had no patients of Chinese ethnicity. The MS support nurse team consists of 9 nurses and covers a large geographical area consisting of Mid and south Staffordshire, Birmingham, and areas of London with a combined caseload of 4653 patients.

Objectives: The team will develop a synthesis of the available evidence to validate some of the theories behind their finding.

Methods: The MS support nurse team sent a global email out to members of the UKMSSNA to see if any of their members had chinese patients with MS and if so how many, but the response rate was poor. They then performed a literture search using PUBMED and CINAHL, to search for the following terms, Chinese and MS, NMO and MS, Chinese Culture and beliefs and the chinese population to validate their findings.

Results: A consensus in 2011 suggested that In England the Chinese population was 0.85%. In 2011 the population in England was 56.1 million. This would propose that there were 476,850 Chinese people living in England. The prevalence rate of MS in the UK is between 100 to 140 out of 100,000 people. Based on 100 out of 100,000, 477 out of 476,850 (0.1%) Chinese people in England should have MS and based on 140 out of 100,000, 668 out of 476,850 (0.14%) Chinese people in England should have MS.

Conclusions: The ms support team’s findings are that this population of patients may be genetically different which could lower their risk of developing MS. Their country of birth may also affect this risk. Language barriers will play a role when patients need to access healthcare systems. Societal roles and relationships could influence believes about health and the development of disease. This population may prefer to access traditional Chinese medicine. It may be that Chinese people are more likely to develop optical spinal MS or NMO. They may also be misdiagnosed if they were seen in china as the knowledge and treatments available in this country are limited. For those patients born in the UK, they should take on this risk of their birth country and the MS nurse team hypothesise that the incidence of MS amongst the British Chinese population will increase over future years. Some work may need to be done to raise awareness of this condition within the Chinese community to ensure that they are accessing the healthcare system. Especially in areas that have a high Chinese percentage population.