November 3, 2015
Psychiatric comorbidity is common in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), and affects the MS community more frequently than a matched control population, although the incidence is stable over time, according to recent findings of a study published in the journal Neurology, the Official Journal of the American Academy of Neurology. In the study, researchers also reported that compared to women, men face a disproportionately greater relative burden of depression when they develop MS.
Depression and anxiety reduce the quality of life in patients with MS, and depression has been found to be associated with reduced persistence to disease-modifying therapy. While such adverse effects of psychiatric comorbidity are recognized in MS patients, its epidemiology remains poorly investigated.
With the goal of comparing the prevalence and incidence of psychiatric comorbidity in patients with MS to age, sex, and geographic area matched controls, in the study entitled “Differences in the burden of psychiatric comorbidity in MS vs the general population,” Ruth Ann Marrie, MD, PhD, and colleagues used data from four Canadian provinces and identified 44,452 MS patients and 220,849 matched controls. The team investigated the prevalence and incidence of bipolar disorder, anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia between 1995 and 2005.
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