Complementary and alternative medicine in multiple sclerosis.

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is often used by patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) but has been disregarded in research until lately. Various confounding factors on CAM utilisation exist, though have hardly been investigated. Besides socio-demographic variables like education, income, gender and age, illness-related factors like severity of disease are discussed. Furthermore, the important role of psychological factors on CAM utilisation is described. In particular, coping strategies such as "rumination", "search for information" and "search for meaning in religion" are more often reported by CAM users than non-users and have important impact on CAM utilisation.