Comorbidities contribute substantially to the severity of common multiple sclerosis symptoms

Abstract

BACKGROUND: More research is needed to understand the contribution of comorbidities to MS symptomatology. OBJECTIVES: To examine the dose-response relationship between the number of comorbidities and severity of MS symptoms and to assess the relative contribution of comorbidity groups and individual comorbidities to the severity of each symptom. METHODS: We surveyed 1223 participants of the Australian MS Longitudinal Study for the presence of 30 comorbidities and the severity of 13 MS symptoms (0-10 scale). The associations between comorbidities and symptoms were assessed using negative binomial regression. The relative contributions of comorbidities to the severity of symptoms were assessed..