Fig. 2

Number of medications taken by women and men with MS depending on the age. In this bar plot, patients are divided into five groups according to age, which are subdivided into men and women, respectively. The bars show the average number of medications taken and the standard deviation is represented by error bars. Pearson correlation analysis revealed a significant difference between male and female MS patients regarding the increase in the number of medications taken with increasing age (p < 0.001, correlation coefficient = 0.995). This fact was further substantiated by a linear model analysis, which showed a significant dependency of the number of drugs taken by age (p < 0.001) and a tendency of an interaction between gender and age (p = 0.097) with a steeper slope in women. MS, multiple sclerosis; p, p value