Background: There is limited information on fatigue and its clinical and psychosocial correlates in children and adolescent MS’ers.
Objective: To assess the relationships between fatigue, cognitive functioning and depression in paediatric MS.
Results: In total, 57 patients with RRMS were compared with 70 healthy controls.
Percentages of fatigued patients ranged from 9% to 14% according to self-reports, and from 23% to 39% according to parent reports.
Fatigue was significantly related with higher scores on the Children’s Depression Inventory.
Higher levels of self-reported cognitive fatigue were associated with impaired performance on a problem-solving test, whereas higher levels of parent-reported cognitive fatigue were associated with impairment on tests of verbal learning, processing speed, complex attention and verbal comprehension.
Conclusions: Our data show that fatigue can affect a sizeable proportion of paediatric MS’ers, and confirm the association between fatigue and depressive symptoms in MS.
“Interesting that fatigue is less common in paediatric MS; in adults ~80% of MS’ers will complain of fatigue. I wonder if the perception of fatigue is learnt?”
“Fatigue, cognitive impairment and depression are also a massive problem in paediatric MS.”