Degraeve Béatrice, Henry Audrey, Lenne Bruno
FLSH/ETHICS (EA7446), Lille Catholic University, Lille, France.
C2S (EA 6291), Pôle Universitaire de Psychiatrie, EPSM et CHU de Reims, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France.
BMJ Neurol Open. 2024 Jan 10;6(1):e000471. doi: 10.1136/bmjno-2023-000471. eCollection 2024.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory and neurodegenerative disease of the central nervous system characterised by a broad and unpredictable range of symptoms, including cognitive and socio-cognitive dysfunction. Alongside the well-known deficits in information processing speed (IPS), executive functioning and episodic memory, recent evidence also highlighted socio-cognitive impairments in MS, such as emotion-recognition deficits. Recently, several studies investigated the association between emotion-recognition and cognitive impairment to assess whether social cognition is parallel to (or even dependent on) general cognitive dysfunction. Yet, there have been inconsistent findings, raising the need for a meta-analysis of the literature.
The aim of the present paper is to outline the protocol for an upcoming meta-analysis we designed to clarify these conclusions.
We plan to estimate combined effect sizes for the association between emotion-recognition and cognitive impairment in MS across three cognitive domains (IPS, executive functions and episodic memory) and 7 emotion scores of interests (total and by 6-basic emotions subscores). Further, we plan to investigate whether identified variables are the cause for heterogeneity in any combined association. To that end, we will conduct additional meta-regression analyses to explore whether overall correlations differ according to clinical characteristics of MS patients (ie, disease duration, MS-phenotype, severity of depression and disability). Ultimately, this study will provide support either for an association of these disorders (in which emotion-recognition deficits might result from more fundamental cognitive dysfunction), or for two distinct sets of symptoms which may occur independently, for targeted patient profiles.
多发性硬化症（MS）是一种中枢神经系统的慢性炎症性和神经退行性疾病，其特征是症状广泛且不可预测，包括认知和社会认知功能障碍。除了信息处理速度（IPS）、执行功能和情景记忆方面众所周知的缺陷外，最近的证据还凸显了MS患者的社会认知障碍，如情绪识别缺陷。最近，多项研究调查了情绪识别与认知障碍之间的关联，以评估社会认知是否与一般认知功能障碍平行（甚至依赖于）。然而，研究结果并不一致，因此需要对相关文献进行荟萃分析。
本文旨在概述我们设计的一项即将进行的荟萃分析的方案，以阐明这些结论。
我们计划估计MS患者情绪识别与认知障碍之间关联的合并效应量，涉及三个认知领域（IPS、执行功能和情景记忆）以及7个感兴趣的情绪评分（总分和6种基本情绪的子评分）。此外，我们计划调查所确定的变量是否是任何合并关联中异质性的原因。为此，我们将进行额外的荟萃回归分析，以探讨总体相关性是否因MS患者的临床特征（即疾病持续时间、MS表型、抑郁严重程度和残疾程度）而异。最终，本研究将为这些障碍之间的关联（其中情绪识别缺陷可能源于更基本的认知功能障碍）或为可能独立出现的两组不同症状提供支持，以针对特定的患者群体。
