Home-based exercise is an effective alternative for people with MS

Home-based rehabilitation can be helpful for easing fatigue, improving motor and cognitive function, and life quality for people with multiple sclerosis (MS), a new clinical trial has found.

The study assigned 15 people with MS to a structured supervised exercise program delivered by a physical therapist, or to a telerehabilitation exercise programme delivered through video calls in people’s own homes.

In the first group, people did an exercise session three days a week for 12 weeks whilst being supervised by a physical therapist. In group two, people followed a 12-week home-based, structured exercise programme controlled through telerehabilitation.

Both groups had a ten-minute warm-up session, 40 minutes of training, then a ten-minute cool-down exercise.

Researchers found that both groups experienced significant improvements in health-related quality of life. Both had improved motor and cognitive function and eased fatigue, but it was group one, with the therapist-supervised exercising, which saw the most significant improvements.

Overall, the results suggest that “home-based structured exercises by means of telerehabilitation can be an effective and helpful alternative to the supervised structured exercises in terms of ADL [activities of daily living], QoL [quality of life], and fatigue,” the study concluded.