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Endocrine Abstracts (2020) 70 AEP54 | DOI: 10.1530/endoabs.70.AEP54

1Biomedical Research Center, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Institute of Clinical and Translational Research, Bratislava, Slovakia; 2Faculty of Medicine, Comenius University, 1st Department of Neurology, Bratislava, Slovakia


Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune and neurodegenerative disease of the central nervous system typically affecting young adults. Autonomic dysfunction is commonly detected in patients with multiple sclerosis. Lower response of sympathoadrenal system to various stressors is mainly connected with more developed disease. However, data evaluating sympathoadrenal system function in early MS are limited. Present study investigates stress response in newly diagnosed MS patients, at the time of the first attack of MS.

Methods: We examined 15 MS patients and 15 age, sex, and body mass index matched healthy controls. MS patients were newly diagnosed, untreated, in the time of the first occurrence of the symptoms. Two stressors were used to evaluate the sympathoadrenal response: Stroop word-color interference mental stress test and orthostasis. Plasma levels of epinephrine and norepinephrine, blood pressure (BP), and heart rate were evaluated.

Results: The MS patients have higher heart rate during the first two minutes of orthostasis compared to controls (P = 0.034). Norepinephrine levels were lower (P = 0.027) in MS patients in the supine position before the orthostasis, however the following rise was similar to healthy controls. Epinephrine levels were similar in both groups before and during orthostasis. At the end of Stroop test MS patients showed trend to have lower systolic BP (P = 0.055) and lower epinephrine (P = 0.064) compared to healthy controls. Norepinephrine response during the Stroop test was unaffected by MS.

Conclusions: We were not able to find clinically significant dysfunction in sympathoadrenal system in newly diagnosed untreated MS patients. The results are supporting the findings that autonomic dysfunction in MS is connected with progression of the disease.

Grant support: The study was supported by the grants APVV-15-0228 and Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic 2018/37-LFUK-11.

Volume 70

22nd European Congress of Endocrinology

Online
05 Sep 2020 - 09 Sep 2020

European Society of Endocrinology 

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