Abstract Details

Title Do Anxiety and Depression Levels Interfere with Cognitive Performance in Ecuadorian Multiple Sclerosis Patients? – a Case-Control Study

Topic Aging, Dementia, and Behavioral Neurology

Presentation(s) P2 - Poster Session 2 (5:30 PM-6:30 PM)

Poster/Presentation
Number 9-012

Objective

The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the presence of anxiety and depressive symptoms had a significant impact in the speed processing performance of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients using the Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT) instrument.

Background Previous investigations have shown that depression and anxiety in multiple sclerosis are associated with deficits in cognitively demanding tasks.

Design/Methods In a cross-sectional study, a total of 40 patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis and 32 healthy controls completed the Symbol Digit Modalities Test and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale from March 2018 to September 2018. A neurologist assessed their level of neurological impairment. ANOVA and Gabriel's post hoc were conducted to assess the transversal study.

Results

ANOVA showed that MS patients performed significantly worse than healthy controls on SDMT at the p <0.05 level [MS with/without anxiety/ healthy controls, F (2,69) = 15.86, p < 0.001] & [MS with/without depression/healthy controls, F (2,69) = 15.47, p < 0.001]. Post hoc comparisons using Gabriel’s test indicated that the mean score for the healthy controls was significantly different than the MS participants with/without anxiety and depression (P < 0.001). However, the mean score between MS participants with/without anxiety and depression (P = 0.652 and P = 0.836, respectively) did not significantly differ from each other.

Conclusions The results of this study indicated that even though psychiatric comorbidities are frequently seen in MS individuals, they do not always influence information processing speed. However, living with MS is an important risk factor for cognitive impairment. This might be due to disease-related effects on the brain such as motor dysfunction, fatigue and visual problems associated with information processing speed in MS. Future investigations are required to clarify how depression and anxiety affect patients' cognition in Hispanic multiple sclerosis patients using a more sensitive measure of processing speed.

Authors/Disclosures
PRESENTER	No disclosure on file
	No disclosure on file
Joyce A. Jimenez Zambrano, MD	Dr. Jimenez Zambrano has nothing to disclose.
	No disclosure on file
	No disclosure on file

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