A study of up to 12 years of follow-up of Friedreich ataxia utilising four measurement tools

Abstract

Objective: To explore the progression of Friedreich ataxia by analysing the change in scores of four clinical measures (the Friedreich Ataxia Rating Scale (FARS), the International Cooperative Ataxia Rating Scale (ICARS), the Functional Independence Measure (FIM) and the Modified Barthel Index (MBI)) over a period of up to 12 years, to ascertain the effects of clinical variables on performance of these measures, and to determine the most sensitive rating scale for measuring disease progression. Methods: We measured the disease progression of up to 147 individuals against disease duration grouped into 5-year intervals. Additional subgroups were created to study the effects of the size of the ..