Long-term and Short-term Episodic Memory Dysfunction in Female MS Patients (PP-18)

Abstract

Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a myelin- targeting autoimmune disease of CNS, targets cognitive abilities in patients. The degree of this dysfunction would be different from one patient to another regarding their disease duration, age, EDSS, and lesion location in brain networks. The cognitive impairment will impact patients’ life adversely. Therefore, the present cross-sectional study aimed to evaluate the verbal episodic memory performance in Iranian Relapsing- Remitting Multiple Sclerosis (RRMS) patients and their healthy counterparts. Due to the susceptibility of women to MS, 35 female patients and 35 age, gender, and education-matched healthy controls were selected based on convenient sampling. The MS patients with Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) scores ≤ 6 were recruited. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT-II) were used for screening participants’ cognitive and verbal episodic memory function respectively. MoCA test (Persian version) was used to screen the participants for their cognitive function due to the higher sensitivity of the MoCA to the Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE) for measuring cognitive function in individuals with MS. CVLT-II assess attention, learning strategies, recall accuracy and consistency, proactive and retroactive interference, recall errors, and recognition. The results revealed that MS patients were significantly impaired in the short and long-term recall as well as recognition list compared to their healthy counterparts. The findings showed that Multiple sclerosis has an adverse impact on verbal episodic memory performance.

Keywords

• episodic memory
• short delay
• long delay
• multiple sclerosis
• female