Many types of conditions tend to occur together, without one causing the other. For example, people with migraine are more likely than the general population to suffer from depression and people who suffer from depression are more likely to experience migraine. Yet, migraines do not necessarily cause depression, and depression does not necessarily cause migraines. They simply tend to occur more often together.
Patients living with multiple sclerosis (MS) may experience several comorbid health conditions. These include:
- Autoimmune disease (30%)
- Depression (24%)
- Anxiety (22%)
- High Blood pressure (19%)
- Thyroid disease (12%)
- High cholesterol (11%)
- Chronic Lung disease (10%)
- Asthma (5%)
- Type II Diabetes
- Rheumatoid Arthritis (3%)
Living with MS disability is a heavy burden, and the presence of comorbidities can only magnify the impact on quality of life. For example, patients with MS frequently suffer from fatigue. Likewise, fatigue is one of the hallmarks of thyroid disease. As these two conditions are comorbid, MS symptoms can seem magnified in patients who have thyroid disease. Similarly, MS patients with at least one comorbid cardiovascular risk factor (i.e. high blood pressure) were found to have an increased number of brain lesions and decreased brain volume than MS patients without that cardiovascular comorbidity. A different study found that the comorbidities of high blood pressure, diabetes, and certain lung diseases affected walking speed, self-reported disability, and depression.
The difficulty is that the symptoms that overlap between MS and comorbid conditions make it difficult to tease out if the MS is progressing (which would require a change in therapy) or if the symptoms are related to other conditions. For example, patients with depression have a “pseudodementia of depression” causing fatigue, poor concentration, and sleep disorders. These very symptoms are also signs of MS disease progression.
BeCare MS can help to objectively quantify neurologic function over time which may help the patient and their clinician best navigate the identification of MS progression and guide MS therapy.