No abstract

253In the recent issue of Folia Parasitologica (59: 93-98), Guenter et al. (2012) published results of a study showing that the effect of latent toxoplasmosis on cognitive function of 70 subjects cannot be proved to exist using a panel of five neuropsychological tests (Guenter et al. 2012). It must be mentioned that the data (mostly ordinal variables without normal distribution) were analysed either with parametric tests (GLM) or with more proper nonparametric tests, but without controlling for age and sex of subjects. It is known for a long time that shifts in personality profile and behaviour associated with latent toxoplasmosis differ very often in their direction between men and women Hrdý 1994, Flegr et al. 1996;Lindová et al. 2006Lindová et al. , 2010. This raises the question whether cognitive functions reveal a similar phenomenon.Therefore, we re-analysed the data on 56 women and 14 men separately. To control for the effect of age, which is known to influence the performance of subjects and also the probability of being Toxoplasma-infected, we analyzed the data with partial Kendall regression, the nonparametric technique that controls for one confounding variable (Kaňková et al. 2011). The results showed that, generally, women scored worse in tests except Digit span-backward test (significantly worse only in the verbal fluency test, p = 0.015), whereas males scored better in all tests except in percentage of correct answers in N-back test (significantly better in digit span-forward, p = 0.008 and in Stroop test I, p = 0.017).Published results of a simple reaction time test show that psychomotor performance of both men and women is lower in subjects with latent toxoplasmosis (Flegr et al. 2008). However, most of personality factors and in some population also intelligence are shifted in an opposite direction in Toxoplasma-infected men and women

Background: Cognitive impairment is recognised as a significant clinical issue in Multiple Sclerosis (MS). It can occur at any stage of the disease, affecting quality of life, occupational activity, and adherence to therapy. This makes the availability of a validated assessment tool for detecting and monitoring cognitive dysfunction in multiple sclerosis essential. The Brief International Cognitive Assessment for Multiple Sclerosis is a practical and simple means of administering a battery of three neuropsychological tests, and does not require any formal neuropsychological training. Objective: To establish the validity of BICAMS in the Polish MS population; to assess the correlations of cognitive status with demographic and clinical factors, including affective symptoms and fatigue. Methods: BICAMS was administered to 61 MS patients and 61 HC subjects. Examination of 20 participants with MS was repeated after one to three weeks to assess test-retest reliability. The patients with MS and HC subjects also completed the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and Modified Fatigue Impact Scale (MFIS). Results: The MS group performed worse than the HC group in all three BICAMS components, obtaining the following values respectively: 51.7 and 56.1 (p = 0.02) for CVLT, 25 and 28 (p = 0.03) for BVMT-R, and 48.8 and 57.2 (p < 0.001) for SDMT. All BICAMS tests had very significant correlations in test-retest reliability (r = 0.83, p < 0.001 for CVLT; r = 0.84, p < 0.001 for BVMTR; r = 0.9, p < 0.001 for SDMT). 34% of MS patients presented cognitive dysfunction based on the criterion of one or more test scores below the 5th percentile value of the HC group. Significant anxiety and depressive symptoms were reported by 31.1% and 18.0% of MS patients. 31.1% of PwMS reported significant fatigue. BICAMS test results were not associated with HADS or MFIS scores. Conclusions: The Polish version of BICAMS is a valid and reliable tool for the assessment of cognitive impairment in patients with MS.

To assess cognitive impairment and affective symptoms and their association with damage to normal-appearing white matter (NAWM) in patients with clinically isolated syndrome (CIS), we compared neuropsychological test scores between patients with CIS and healthy controls, and examined correlations between these and proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) outcomes in patients with CIS. Forty patients with CIS and 40 healthy participants were tested with the set of neuropsychological tests, the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). Single-voxel 1H-MRS was performed on frontal and parietal NAWM of patients with CIS to assess ratios of N-acetyl-aspartate (NAA) to creatine (Cr), myo-inositol (mI), and choline (Cho), as well as mI/Cr and Cho/Cr ratios. Patients with CIS had lower cognitive performance, higher scores for the BDI and anxiety subscale of HADS than healthy controls. There were significant correlations between the following neuropsychological tests and metabolic ratios in the frontal NAWM: Stroop Color-Word Test and Cho/Cr, Symbol Digit Modalities Test and mI/Cr as well as NAA/mI, Go/no-go reaction time and NAA/Cho as well as NAA/mI, Californian Verbal Learning Test and NAA/Cr. BDI scores were related to frontal NAA/mI and parietal NAA/Cr and Cho/Cr ratios, whereas HADS-depression scores were associated with frontal NAA/Cr and NAA/mI, and parietal NAA/Cr and Cho/Cr ratios. HADS-anxiety correlated with parietal NAA/Cr ratio. This study suggests that neurochemical changes in the NAWM assessed with single-voxel 1H-MRS are associated with cognitive performance and affective symptoms in patients with CIS.