TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hiew, Shawn
A1  - Nguemeni, Carine
A1  - Zeller, Daniel
T1  - Efficacy of transcranial direct current stimulation in people with multiple sclerosis: a review
T2  - European Journal of Neurology
N2  - Background and purpose
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory disease causing a wide range of symptoms including motor and cognitive impairment, fatigue and pain. Over the last two decades, non-invasive brain stimulation, especially transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), has increasingly been used to modulate brain function in various physiological and pathological conditions. However, its experimental applications for people with MS were noted only as recently as 2010 and have been growing since then. The efficacy for use in people with MS remains questionable with the results of existing studies being largely conflicting. Hence, the aim of this review is to paint a picture of the current state of tDCS in MS research grounded on studies applying tDCS that have been done to date.

Methods
A keyword search was performed to retrieve articles from the earliest article identified until 14 February 2021 using a combination of the groups (1) ‘multiple sclerosis’, ‘MS’ and ‘encephalomyelitis’ and (2) ‘tDCS’ and ‘transcranial direct current stimulation’.

Results
The analysis of the 30 articles included in this review underlined inconsistent effects of tDCS on the motor symptoms of MS based on small sample sizes. However, tDCS showed promising benefits in ameliorating fatigue, pain and cognitive symptoms.

Conclusion
Transcranial direct current stimulation is attractive as a non-drug approach in ameliorating MS symptoms, where other treatment options remain limited. The development of protocols tailored to the individual's own neuroanatomy using high definition tDCS and the introduction of network mapping in the experimental designs might help to overcome the variability between studies.
KW  - transcranial direct current stimulation
KW  - cognitive
KW  - effects
KW  - motor
KW  - multiple sclerosis
Y1  - 2022
UR  - https://opus.bibliothek.uni-wuerzburg.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/25942
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-259424
VL  - 29
IS  - 2
ER  -