Professor Yasmine Probst’s research brings together a multidisciplinary team of health professionals involved in the care of MS.
Professor Probst and her team will use a tested randomised controlled trial design for lifestyle management to help people living with MS to make positive changes to their eating patterns, exercise routine and overall self-management of their MS. Making positive behaviour changes can give people living with MS a greater sense of control of their disease.
The team’s lifestyle approach includes nutrition, exercise and psychology elements and will compare them with usual care delivered by an MS nurse. Both the lifestyle approach and usual care will be provided via a telehealth platform. Changes to health measures, including percentage body fat, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, disability, fatigue, and sleep, will be assessed, along with markers of inflammation. The cost effectiveness of this type of care will be evaluated to consider how suitable it is in practice.
It is hypothesised that the tailored lifestyle approach will result in greater improvements to symptoms of MS.
There has been very strong interest in this project, with over 340 people being screened for eligibility and 72 people being enrolled. All enrolled participants have completed their initial assessments and many are actively taking part in the program or its follow-up stages. Early feedback shows people enjoy the telehealth format, which makes it easier to fit appointments into daily life and reduces travel barriers.
The study is tracking changes in weight, fatigue, sleep, physical activity, diet, mood, and overall quality of life. As more participants reach later stages of the program, Professor Probst and her team will be able to understand how well the lifestyle approach works and how it may help people living with MS manage symptoms and improve health outcomes. Overall, the team is making strong progress and beginning to see how a multidisciplinary lifestyle program delivered via telehealth could become a practical part of MS care in the future.
The team has several manuscripts in preparation and has been awarded an MS Australia Incubator Grant to conduct a sub-study that explores changes in the oral microbiome resulting from the lifestyle program.
Over the next 12 months, Professor Probst and her team will continue recruiting participants, delivering the study’s telehealth treatment programs and tracking changes in health measures. They will also focus on analysing data.
Professor Yasmine Probst and her team have led a major shift in how lifestyle management, particularly nutrition, is recognised in MS care. What began as a small research group has grown into a multidisciplinary team with national and international collaborations, including with the UK, Germany, and the Consortium for MS Care (CMSC) in the USA.
Early work by the team identified that much of the online dietary advice for people with MS was unreliable or unsafe. In response, they developed tools to assess diet quality, reviewed intervention strategies, and created a catalogue of over 5,700 food items to support a new dietary risk assessment tailored to MS. Their research also confirmed that many MS-promoted diets are not aligned with national nutrition guidelines.
Over time, the team broadened their focus to include other lifestyle factors like sleep and social connection. These insights shaped consensus guidelines and behaviour change strategies to support people living with MS, and also led to the development of a co-designed online portal and toolkit. This portal and toolkit are now being used in the HALT-MS clinical trial, supported by MS Australia.
In recognition of their impact, the team successfully secured additional funding through an MS Australia Project Grant to continue this work. Their findings have been presented internationally and are now embedded in clinical best practice guidelines and university curricula for health professionals in Australia. The project has also supported three PhD candidates and many Honours, Masters, and medical students; producing more than 17 published papers and significantly advancing the evidence base for lifestyle-focused MS care.
Updated 31 March 2026
Associate Professor Yvonne Learmonth
Dr Litza Kiropoulos
Professor Anneke van der Walt
Dr Julie Campbell
Professor Marijka Batterham
Associate Professor Nenad Naumovski
Professor Lorna Moxham
$250,000
2024
4 years
Current project
