Our readers will notice a small, but significant, change in this first 2019 issue of the International Journal of MS Care: the cover art features a work by a person with MS. On the Contents page (p. xi), you will also find information about the artist. This new look was made possible through a collaboration with the Multiple Sclerosis Association of America (MSAA) and their Art Showcase program. Creative arts constitute a powerful means of expression, and their therapeutic potential is largely untapped. The goal of this initiative is to emphasize that the person with MS is the most important member of the MS care team, and to demonstrate how the experience of the disease and its consequences can be expressed through art. Going forward, we hope to display artwork from the MSAA Art Showcase with each IJMSC issue. I want to express my gratitude to the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers (CMSC) leadership, the MSAA leadership and staff, our publisher, and our editorial team, who all contributed to this project.
I also want to welcome to our editorial board Ahmed Z. Obeidat, MD, PhD. Dr. Obeidat serves as co-chair of the CMSC MS Professionals-in-Training (MS-PiT) special interest group. A substantial number of manuscripts submitted to IJMSC have a trainee as first author or co-author. I look forward to working with Dr. Obeidat to further the engagement in scholarly publishing of trainees from all disciplines involved in MS care. Dr. Obeidat also has strong experience with medical humanities, which we hope will lead to further projects linking the arts and medicine.
Most of the articles compiled in this issue reflect on wellness and symptom management in MS. The literature review by Rooney and colleagues summarizes published evidence on the effectiveness of interventions for the management of fatigue, one of the most prevalent and disabling symptoms of MS. Although the authors conclude that the evidence is inconclusive overall, I hope that the information presented will help clinicians in educating and counseling their patients, and will also foster further research. I encourage you to take advantage of the multidisciplinary continuing education credits attached to this article.
One way to underscore the importance of screening for and managing MS symptoms, wellness issues, and comorbidities is to explore associations with patients' physical and emotional function. Articles in this issue report associations between nutrition and measures of physical capacity and health-related quality of life (Bromley and colleagues), between physical fitness and independence in instrumental activities of daily living (Sebastião and colleagues), and between the presence of a diagnosed sleep disorder and health-related quality of life (White and colleagues).
The features, impact, and management of MS must be described and understood in the context of the specific environment in which those affected live. Schiess and colleagues report on the rates of diagnosis and treatment of depression and anxiety among patients in the United Arab Emirates, and explain how cultural factors may explain some of their findings.
Finally, we periodically publish validation studies of standardized outcome measures for MS. These can be used by clinicians to help with decision making and improving quality of care, and by clinical researchers to better understand the effectiveness of a variety of interventions. Wood and colleagues found that a short version of the Activities-specific Balance Confidence scale exhibits similar psychometric properties to the original 16-item self-report scale.
I hope you enjoy IJMSC's new cover art. As part of your New Year's resolutions, I encourage each of you to unleash your inner artist, and to entice your patients to do the same.