Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Abstract
Background & objective: The Voice as a product of a multidimensional mechanism is highly controlled by nervous system. Multiple Sclerosis as an idiopathic neurologically disease leads to voice disorder as a primary sign. Since there is no lesion on the vocal cords, acoustic analysis like frequency based analysis as a robust and exact method, can be used as a method of assessment. The objective of the present study was to compare voice quality of MS patients with their counterparts.
Methods: This is a cross sectional study. Purposive sampling was used to recruit 60 patients, namely, 30 MS patients and 30 normal counterparts aged between 20 to 60 years old. The research instruments were Cepstral Peak Prominence (CPP) and smoothed Cepstral peak prominence (CPPS).  Acoustic analysis was performed by “Speech Tool” using sustained vowel prolongation and reading the standard text tasks. Independent T-test was used to analyze the data.
Results: CPP and CPPS values were significantly higher in normal females either in vowel prolongation or reading tasks (p<0.001). However, CPP (p<0.05) and CPPS (p<0.001) values in normal males were higher just in vowel prolongation task not for reading task.
Conclusion: Voice analysis of patients with Multiple Sclerosis can be used as a diagnostic tool for voice disorders. The results of the present study revealed the importance of voice analysis in early stages of MS especially in female group.