Participants
photosensitive epilepsy, neurological illness, musculoskeletal disorder
RECRUITMENT, DISORDERS, METABOLIC DISEASE, MUSCULOSKELETAL DISORDER, PHOTOSENSITIVE EPILEPSY
Recruitment process involved formal letters, posting flyers, sending emails, verbal announcements postings to online bulletin boards and social media sites. Once a patient was recruited, a medical doctor checked whether the inclusion and exclusion criteria were met and determined the most affected UL of the patients who met the inclusion criteria in the study.The study inclusion criteria were as follows: age between 20 and 65 years; confirmed diagnosis of MS according to the McDonald criteria [The exclusion criteria were a diagnosis of another neurological illness or musculoskeletal disorder different to MS; diagnosis of any cardiovascular, respiratory, or metabolic disease, or other conditions that may interfere with the study; suffering a relapse, an exacerbation or hospitalisation within the last 3 months prior to commencement of the assessment protocol or during the therapeutic intervention process; receiving a cycle of intravenous or oral steroids within 6 months prior to the start of the assessment protocol and during the therapeutic intervention period; receiving treatment with botulinum toxin in the 6 months prior to the beginning of the study; presence of uncorrected visual disorders; and a history of photosensitive epilepsy related to the use of video games.The estimated effect size for the main outcome measure (gross manual dexterity) was 0.25 (medium effect size). A correlation of 0.5 between repeated measures was assumed. With a statistical power of 0.80, an alpha error of 0.05 and a total of 3 measurements taken in two participant groups, a minimum of 28 participants was required, as calculated using G*Power® software. Accounting for a 10% potential loss to follow-up, a sample size of 30 patients (15 subjects per group) was considered for this study.