Association between myasthenia gravis and cognitive disorders: a PRISMA-compliant meta-analysis

Abstract

Objective

This meta-analysis assessed the association between myasthenia gravis (MG) and cognitive disorders.

Methods

The PubMed, Web of Science, OVID, EMBASE, CNKI and Wanfang electronic databases were comprehensively searched from inception to October 2020 for relevant studies. The primary outcomes were scores of the cognitive function battery. A random effects model was used to evaluate the cognitive function of patients with MG.

Results

Eight cross-sectional studies containing 381 patients and 220 healthy controls were included in this meta-analysis. In relation to global cognitive function, patients with MG performed significantly worse than healthy individuals (SMD = −0.4, 95% CI = −0.63 to −0.16, p < 0.001, I² = 10%). Specifically, the impaired cognitive domains included language, visuospatial function, information processing, verbal immediate and delayed recall memory, visual immediate recall memory, and response fluency, while attention, executive function, and visual delayed recall memory were unimpaired. The patients with early-onset (SMD= −0.527, 95% CI = −0.855 to −0.199, p = 0.002) and generalized MG (SMD= −0.577, 95% CI = −1.047 to −0.107, p = 0.016) had poorer global cognitive performance than the healthy population.

Conclusions

Patients with MG may have cognitive disorders, including those associated with the domains of language, visuospatial function, information processing, verbal immediate and delayed recall memory, visual immediate recall memory and response fluency. Furthermore, the age of onset and disease severity may be associated with cognitive disorders in patients with MG.

Keywords:

• Myasthenia gravis
• cognition
• cognitive disorder
• neuropsychological test
• cognitive area
• meta-analysis

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Key R&D Program of Jiangsu Province (BE2019666) and the Jiangsu Natural Science Foundation (BK20211075).

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest or biomedical financial interests.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Key R&D Program of Jiangsu Province (BE2019666) and the Jiangsu Natural Science Foundation (BK20211075).