deficit in planning performance in patients with multiple sclerosis

aim and background: multiple sclerosis (ms) is a chronic inflammatory disease of the central nervous system in which primary symptoms emerges in adults between the age 20 and 40 years old. previous findings indicate 15-20 percent of multiple sclerosis (ms) patients are diagnosed with executive function impairments. the purpose of this study is to evaluate planning function as one of executive functions subsets in patients with relapsing-remitting ms.   method and materials: in this ex-post facto study which is done in esfahan ms association, 49 female with relapsing-remitting ms and 43 female age-, education- and iq-matched without ms were selected by haphazard sampling. to assess their planning function, both groups were tested using tower of hanoi task. findings: multivariate analysis of variance shows significant difference between to group in three, four, five, six and seven movement tasks(p<0/ 001). additionally, patient group has more extra moves (errors) than observe, considering that there was no limitation in time. to measure the sensitivity and specificity of different tasks of tower of hanoi task, roc curve is applied. all curves were located above the reference line. conclusions: findings indicate patients with ms had impairment in planning function which is not caused by deficit in their general iq. also results showed that six and seven movement tasks of the tower of hanoi have higher sensitivity and specificity for assessing planning function.