Subjective Cognitive Fatigue and Autonomic Abnormalities in Multiple Sclerosis Patients

Cognitive fatigue and autonomic abnormalities are frequent symptoms in MS. Our model of MS-related fatigue assumes a shared neural network for cognitive fatigue and autonomic failures, i.e., aberrant vagus nerve activity induced by inflammatory processes. Therefore, they should occur in common.

To explore the relationship between cognitive fatigue and autonomic symptoms in MS patients, using self-reported questionnaires.

In 95 MS patients, cognitive fatigue was assessed with the Fatigue Scale for Motor and Cognitive Functions and autonomic abnormalities with the Composite Autonomic Symptom Scale-31 (COMPASS-31). We used exploratory correlational analyses and hierarchical regression analysis, controlling for age, depressive mood, disease status, and disease duration, to analyze the relation between autonomic abnormalities and cognitive fatigue.

The cognitive fatigue score strongly correlated with the COMPASS-31 score (r = 0.47, p < 0.001). Regression analysis revealed that a model, including the COMPASS-31 domains: pupillomotor, orthostatic intolerance, and bladder, best predict the level of cognitive fatigue (R² = 0.47, p < 0.001) after forcing the covariates into the model.

In MS patients, cognitive fatigue and autonomic dysfunction share a proportion of variance. This supports our model assuming that fatigue might be explained at least partially by inflammation-induced vagus nerve activity.