OBJECTIVES: Neuromyelitis optica (NMO) is an inflammatory CNS disease, that presents with severe optic neuritis and transverse myelitis. It is often accompanied by severe motor and sensory disability. In the past few years, NMO has gained lot of interest and shares a controversial relationship with multiple sclerosis (MS). It is not yet known whether NMO differs in its effect on quality of life (QoL) when compared with MS. We aimed to evaluate the QoL in patients with NMO by conducting a systematic review of published peer-reviewed studies. METHODS: A literature search was performed in "MEDLINE" and "EMBASE" using search terms “quality of life”, "neuromyelitis optica", and "Devic's". The search was limited to English language. All studies that got published before November 2014 were retrieved. Studies that included patients with NMO and reported use of validated QoL instrument were considered eligible for qualitative analysis. Two independent researchers were involved in study selection and data extraction. RESULTS: A total of seven studies met the inclusion criteria. All the studies were conducted in different countries: The United states of America, United Kingdom, France, Japan, and Argentina. The number of patients included in the studies ranged from 18-50. The common QoL instruments used included: Short form-36 and different pain severity scores. Three studies used MS patients as the comparator while two compared the data with normal subjects. Most studies reported that QoL is lower in NMO patients as compared to the ones suffering from MS and is much worse than normal subjects. The lower QoL score corresponded with higher pain scores in NMO patients as compred to MS patients.  CONCLUSIONS: Our review showed that NMO patients are associated with higher levels of pain and lower QoL scores than MS patients. However, available evidence seems to be insufficient and more research is warrented in this context.