Dados do Trabalho

Título

The presence of depressive and/or anxious symptoms is correlated with fatigue and its intensity in patients with Multiple Sclerosis

Resumo

Introduction: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory disease that affects the central nervous system and is the leading cause of disability in young people in developed countries. MS significantly affects the quality of life of patients and has great importance for public health. Further, the pathophysiology is complex and the clinical presentation is heterogeneous, where fatigue is the most prevalent symptom among patients with the disease, being significantly experienced in up to 92% of sick patients. Worldwide researchers have already tried to investigate the impact of fatigue on the quality of life of those patients, however, especially in Brazil, there’s still a gap. Objective: To evaluate impact of fatigue in depressive and anxiety symptoms.in MS patients. Methods: A prospective study was conducted with consecutive patients who met McDonalds diagnostic criteria. Clinical and epidemiological characteristics were described. Fatigue was measured with Modified Fatigue Impact Scale (MFIS) and depressive and anxiety symptoms with the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). Patients were separated in six categories: absence of fatigue (MFIS score 0-38) and fatigue clinically significant (MFIS score 39-84), probable depression (HAD-depression 12-21), improbable depression (HAD-depression 0-12), probable anxiety (HAD-anxiety 12-21) and improbable anxiety (HAD-anxiety 0-12). The descriptive analysis was performed through clinical information, their frequencies, means and standard deviations. The inferential analysis was performed using Pearson's chi-square test and its respective odds ratio. Results: 204 patients were included in study. The frequency among men was 58 (28.4%) and women was 145 (71.1%). The mean of age was 39,78 ± 11,89 years. The Pearson Chi-square test demonstrated that there is an association between the presence of depressive symptoms among patients with clinically significant fatigue [X²(1) 13,494; p<0,001] with 10,010 of odds ratio (CI 95%: 2,3- 43,47) and also anxiety symptoms [X²(1) 11,803; p<0,001] with 4,546 of odds ratio (CI 95% 1,81-11,41). Conclusion: the study concludes that there is a correlation between the presence of clinically significant fatigue and the presence of important depressive and anxious symptoms in patients with MS. In addition, it was noticed that patients with significant fatigue are 10,01 times more likely to have major depressive symptoms and 4,54 times more likely to have major anxiety symptoms.

Palavras Chave

Fatigue;Multiple Sclerosis; Depression;Anxiety