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Updated: Aug 12, 2025

Author Spotlight: Unveiling the Connection Between Sleep Disorders and Cognitive Symptoms in Depression
Published on: April 26, 2024
Main and moderated effects of multimorbidity and depressive symptoms on cognition
Jacyra Azevedo Paiva de Araujo1, Érika Fialho Morais Xavier1, Elisângela da Silva Rodrigues2
1Centro de Integração de Dados e Conhecimentos para Saúde, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz-Fiocruz, Salvador, BA, Brazil.
Objective:
Multimorbidity, or the occurrence of two or more chronic conditions, is a global challenge, with implications for mortality, morbidity, disability, and life quality. Psychiatric disorders are common among the chronic diseases that affect patients with multimorbidity. It is still not well understood whether psychiatric symptoms, especially depressive symptoms, moderate the effect of multimorbidity on cognition.
Methods:
We used a large (n=2,681) dataset to assess whether depressive symptomatology moderates the effect of multimorbidity on cognition using structural equation modelling.
Results:
It was found that the more depressive symptoms and chronic conditions, the worse the cognitive performance, and the higher the educational level, the better the cognitive performance. We found a significant but weak (0.009; p = 0.04) moderating effect.
Conclusion:
We have provided the first estimate of the moderating effect of depression on the relation between multimorbidity and cognition, which was small. Although this moderation has been implied by many previous studies, it was never previously estimated.
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