Recent UK ME/CFS Biobank paper suggests link between smoking and cognitive function in ME/CFS

The paper, entitled “Prevalence of and risk factors for severe cognitive and sleep symptoms in ME/CFS and MS”, confirms the significant impact of cognitive symptoms on people with ME/CFS, and to a lesser but still considerable extent on people with MS.

Among the findings, the authors demonstrated the impact of smoking in aggravating neurocognitive dysfunction, suggesting that stopping smoking may be a potential additional strategy to reduce morbidity in those with ME/CFS. Depression was associated with cognitive dysfunction severity in people with MS, but not in those with ME/CFS; this might suggest differing mechanisms involved in neuro-cognitive abnormalities in these two diseases.

The lead author, Vageesh Jain, is a medical doctor and a graduate of King’s College, London. He worked with the team over several months analysing some of the questionnaire data generously provided by participants in the UK ME/CFS Biobank.
The full article is available at:

https://bmcneurol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12883-017-0896-0.

June 2017