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©2011 Proventus A charity registered in England & Wales No 1131517

Saturday 24 March 2012

Warmer outdoor temperature is associated with worse cognitive status in Multiple Sclerosis

Victoria M. Leavitt, PhD, James F. Sumowski, PhD, Nancy Chiaravalloti, PhD and John DeLuca, PhD
+ Author Affiliations

From the Kessler Foundation Research Center (V.M.L., J.F.S., N.C., J.D.), West Orange; and Departments of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (V.M.L., J.F.S., N.C., J.D.) and Neurology and Neurosciences (J.D.), UMDNJ–New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ.
Correspondence & reprint requests to Dr. Leavitt: vleavitt@kesslerfoundation.org

ABSTRACT
Objective: Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) have more clinical exacerbations and T2 lesion activity during warmer weather. The current study is the first to investigate whether outdoor temperature is related to cognitive status across patients with MS (cross-sectional analysis), and whether cognitive status fluctuates with changes in outdoor temperature within patients with MS (longitudinal analysis).


Methods: For the cross-sectional analysis, 40 patients with MS and 40 healthy control (HC) subjects were recruited throughout the calendar year. Cognitive status (processing speed, memory) and outdoor temperature were recorded for the day of testing. We calculated partial correlations between cognitive status and temperature for patients with MS and HCs, controlling for demographic and disease variables. For the longitudinal analysis, cognitive status and outdoor temperature were recorded at baseline and 6-month follow-up in a separate sample of 45 patients with MS. We calculated the partial correlation between temperature and cognitive status at follow-up, controlling for baseline temperature and cognitive status (i.e., whether temperature changes are related to cognitive changes within patients with MS).


Results: Cross-sectionally, warmer temperature was related to worse cognitive status in patients with MS (rp = −0.45, p = 0.006), not in HCs (rp = 0.00, p = 0.984). Longitudinally, increased outdoor temperature from baseline to follow-up was related to a decline in cognitive status within patients with MS (rp = −0.39, p = 0.010).


Conclusions: Cognitive status in patients with MS is worse on warmer days, consistent with a previously established link between heat and lesion activity. Our findings have implications for clinical trial planning, treatment, and lifestyle decisions. We discuss cognitive status as a potential marker of quiescent exacerbations.

http://www.proventus.org.uk/page503.html#Warmer

3 comments:

  1. thankyou for your hard work oure doing and videos also on you tube too. UK really needs some one to do a CCSVI foundation for us here in UK.Canada have help and people who will donate so they can all be helped UK has no one still yet am sorry to ask and wishes that we had moved forward by now via our NHS they are way too slow and UK is treated the worst if am honest , have been looking for help for 3 years for UK and done so much in Parliament too that they deleted I kept some copies and printed off before they did this to me.I stood up to David Cameron a few times and printed off . We are so neglected here its so wrong. Someone has to speak out

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  2. Hi Lynnie, this is exactly what Proventus is about. Last year we wrote to every MP in the UK (that's a total of 650), including a copy of our 94 page document on MS. Only 14 replied, and out of these 14 only 5 expressed an interest. You may be interested to read our next post, it will be on here within the hour. ProvEmma

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  3. thankyou for all your help appriciated so much

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