Research Article Does Fatigue Complaint Reflect Memory Impairment in Multiple Sclerosis?

Copyright © 2014 Caroline Jougleux-Vie et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Background and Purpose. Fatigue andmemory impairment are common symptoms inmultiple sclerosis (MS) and bothmay interact with cognition. This can contribute to making a complaint misrepresentative of the objective disorder. We sought to determine whether fatigue complaint in MS reflects memory impairment and investigated whether patients ’ subjective fatigue is associated withmemory complaint.Methods. FiftyMSpatients complaining of fatigue underwent subjective assessment of fatigue andmemory complaint measured using self-assessment scales. Cognitive functions were assessed using a battery of neuropsychological tests, including a test of verbal episodicmemory, the selective reminding test (SRT). Correlations were studied between subjective fatigue, memory complaint, and performance in verbal episodic memory. Results. Depression score, psychotropic and/or antiepileptic drug use, Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) score, and MS form were confounding factors. After adjusting for these confounding factors, neither fatigue complaint normemory complaint was correlated with SRT performance. Subjective fatigue was significantly associated with memory complaint. Conclusion. Although complaint of fatigue in MS was correlated with memory complaint, subjective fatigue was not the expression of memory impairment. 1