Thormann A, et al. - The impact of chronic comorbidity on the time of diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS) and on mortality in MS is investigated in this study. In light of these outcomes, an increased awareness of both the necessity of neurologic assessment of new neurologic symptoms in persons with preexisting chronic disease and of optimum treatment of comorbidity in MS is critical.

Methods

• For this research, they conducted a population-based, nationwide cohort study.
• This study included all incident MS cases in Denmark with first MS symptom between 1980 and 2005.
• By utilizing multinomial logistic regression, they compared individuals with and without chronic comorbidity to examine the time of diagnosis.
• To investigate mortality, they utilized Cox regression with time-dependent covariates, following study participants from clinical MS onset until endpoint (death) or to the end of the study, censuring at emigration.

Results

• Between 1980 and 2005, they recognized 8,947 individuals with clinical onset of MS.
• In the study of time of diagnosis, they observed statistically significant odds ratios for longer diagnostic delays with cerebrovascular comorbidity (2.01 [1.44-2.80]; <0.0005), cardiovascular comorbidity (4.04 [2.78-5.87]; <0.0005), lung comorbidity (1.93 [1.42-2.62]; <0.0005), diabetes comorbidity (1.78 [1.04-3.06]; 0.035), and cancer comorbidity (2.10 [1.20–3.67]; 0.009).
• In the mortality study, they observed higher hazard ratios with psychiatric comorbidity (2.42 [1.67-3.01]; <0.0005), cerebrovascular comorbidity (2.47 [2.05-2.79]; <0.0005), cardiovascular comorbidity (1.68 [1.39-2.03]; <0.0005), lung comorbidity (1.23 [1.01-1.50]; 0.036), diabetes comorbidity (1.39 [1.05-1.85]; 0.021), cancer comorbidity (3.51 [2.94-4.19]; <0.0005), and Parkinson disease comorbidity (2.85 [1.34-6.06]; 0.007).