The ABILHAND-23 Patient Reported Outcome Measure in Secondary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis: A Cross-Sectional Analysis With the Nine Hole Peg Test.

BACKGROUND: People with progressive multiple sclerosis (pwPMS), who typically have established lower limb dysfunction, experience greater disability from upper limb dysfunction (ULD). The 9-hole peg test (9HPT) is the primary clinical measure for ULD but does not fully capture the patient experience. The ABILHAND-23 is a well-validated patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) that evaluates bimanual ability in daily function. However, no large-scale studies have assessed if the 9HPT reflects the individual ULD experience in pwPMS. OBJECTIVES: We sought to (van Munster et al. 2023) assess the associations between the ABILHAND-23 and 9HPT, and (Huertas-Hoyas et al. 2020) to assess the ability of the 9HPT and other relevant covariables to predict ABILHAND-23 scores, using baseline data from the MS-STAT2 trial, a phase 3 study on simvastatin for secondary progressive MS (SPMS). METHODS: A cross-sectional analysis of baseline data from the UCLH cohort of the MS-STAT2 trial was performed using multiple linear regression to predict ABILHAND-23 logit scores by 9HPT. RESULTS: 225 participants were analyzed. ABILHAND-23 scores moderately correlated with the 9HPT (rho = 0.47). Regression analysis showed that better 9HPT performance modestly predicted ABILHAND-23 logits (β = -0.05, SE 0.008, p-value < 0.001). CONCLUSION: The 9HPT only modestly predicts the ABILHAND-23 but does not fully capture the individual's daily disability experience, underscoring the value of patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) like the ABILHAND-23 in clinical trials.