Abstract

An association between prolactinemia with disability, clinical forms, and sex of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) remains unclear. The aim of this study was to evaluate the association of prolactin with clinical forms and accumulating disability over time in patients with MS. A longitudinal study was carried out with 101 patients with relapsing–remitting MS (RRMS) and 19 with progressive forms of MS (ProgMS). The disability over time, as well as prolactin and ferritin serum levels were evaluated at baseline (T0), 8-month follow-up (T8), and 16-month follow-up. The disability at T0, T8, and T16 was higher among patients with ProgMS than those with RRMS. Prolactin and ferritin levels did not differ over time between both groups. Initially, prolactin was associated with MS disability. After introducing age and sex, the effects of prolactin on disability were no longer significant. Prolactin was associated with age and sex, whereby age was positively associated with disability. In the same way, after introducing age and sex, the effects of diagnosis on prolactin levels, as well as the association between prolactin and ferritin, were no longer significant (P = 0.563 and P = 0.599, respectively). Moreover, 21.6% of the variance in the disability was predicted by age (P < 0.001), and sex (P = 0.049), while prolactin was not significant. In conclusion, the effects of prolactin on the disability and clinical forms of MS patients may be spurious results because those correlations reflect the positive associations of age with the disability and the negative association of age with prolactin.

中文翻译：

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催乳素与多发性硬化症患者的残疾和临床形式无关

摘要

催乳素血症与残疾，临床形式和多发性硬化症（MS）患者的性别之间的关联仍不清楚。这项研究的目的是评估MS患者催乳素与临床形式的关系以及随着时间的推移积累的残疾。对101例复发缓解型MS（RRMS）和19例进行性MS型（ProgMS）进行了纵向研究。在基线（T0），8个月随访（T8）和16个月随访中评估随时间推移的残疾以及催乳素和铁蛋白血清水平。ProgMS患者的T0，T8和T16残疾程度高于RRMS患者。两组之间的催乳素和铁蛋白水平无差异。最初，催乳素与MS残疾有关。介绍了年龄和性别之后 催乳素对残疾的影响不再显着。催乳素与年龄和性别有关，而年龄与残疾呈正相关。同样，在引入性别之后，诊断对催乳素水平的影响以及催乳素与铁蛋白之间的关联不再显着（P  = 0.563和P  = 0.599）。此外，按年龄（P  <0.001）和性别（P  = 0.049）预测残疾差异的21.6％，而催乳素则不显着。总之，催乳素对MS患者的残疾和临床形式的影响可能是虚假的结果，因为这些相关性反映了年龄与残疾的正相关和年龄与催乳素的负相关。