الفهرس 
Acknowledgement
Historical BackgroundOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Certain challenges and limitations face the epidemiological studies of NMOSD especially in south Egyptian population. The restrictive availability of NMO-IgG tests represents a major obstacle in the diagnosis process and certainly underestimates the real prevalence of the spectrum of neuromyelitis optica in our study population. This study provided the first attempt to roughly estimate the relative frequency of NMOSD in Upper Egypt and suggested that NMOSD is not - as was previously thought - a rare entity among patients with idiopathic inflammatory demyelinating disorders in Egypt, with a high AQP4 seroprevalence. Worldwide epidemiological data revealed the higher prevalence of NMOSD in populations with African ancestry (10/100,000) followed by East Asians (3.5/100,000) while the lowest prevalence rates were recorded from white and Caucasians (0.5–1/100,000), with specific demographic, clinical, laboratory and radiological features peculiar to each racial. In North Africa and Middle East, studies on NMOSD are rare and most often focus on isolated cases, together with the limited resources for specific marker testing, significant underestimation, delayed or even misdiagnosis is common. This was a prospective observational study of patients fulfilling the 2015 International Panel of Neuromyelitis Optica Diagnosis (IPND) consensus criteria, Attending Assiut University Hospitals, over 18-month duration, from 1 March 2019 till 31 August 2020, to describe the seroprevalence, the clinical and radiological features of NMOSD in Egyptian patients. Over the study period, all cases with suspected demyelinating disorders were reviewed, 102 cases were recruited, but only 90 cases were included after applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The inclusion criteria included: all cases fulfilled the 2015 IPND consensus diagnostic criteria, incomplete forms that did not fulfill the criteria associated with strong clinical and radiological suspicion, ADEM and atypical MS cases.