Cognition, depression, fatigue, and quality of life in primary Sjögren's syndrome: correlations

The aim of the present study was to investigate the prevalence and pattern of cognitive dysfunction observed in primary Sjögren's syndrome (PSS) and to examine the relationships between cognitive abilities, depression, fatigue, and quality of life.

Thirty-two subjects with PSS were compared with 19 healthy controls on comprehensive neuropsychological, depression, fatigue, health state, and daily-life activities tests.

There was low performance in Clock Drawing, COWAT, Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT), Colorless Word Reading (Stroop1) and Recognizing Colors (Stroop2) Patterns of STROOP test, SDLT, Auditory-Verbal Learning Test (AVLT), immediate and long-term verbal memory, Benton Judgment of Line Orientation Test (BJLOT), and in all the patterns of RCFT in PSS patients compared to the healthy control group (p < .05). It was observed an increased depression frequency and fatigue severity, impairment in health condition, and a decreased quality of life in PSS cases compared to the healthy controls (p < .05). All the depression, fatigue severity, and quality of life tests showed a significant positive correlation with each other (p < .05). A significant negative correlation between Clock Drawing and SF-36-BP (p = .031, r = -.382) and SF-36-GH (p = .027, r = -.392) was observed.

Clock Drawing, PASAT, and AVLT are very useful tests to determine the subclinical and clinical cognitive dysfunction to evaluate attention, information processing speed, executive functions, and short-term and long-term verbal memory in PSS patients. Depression and fatigue may not affect the neuropsychological tests performance.