Impact of Visual Discomfort Symptoms On SDMT Performance Among Persons With Multiple Sclerosis

Research Objectives To examine how visual discomfort symptoms affect performance on the symbol digit modalities test (SDMT), a visually mediated information processing speed task which is considered a gold standard measure for cognition in multiple sclerosis (MS) research. Design Observational, cross-sectional study. Setting General community. Participants Eighty-seven persons with MS and 30 healthy controls (HCs). Interventions Not applicable. Main Outcome Measures Visual discomfort questionnaire (VDQ) and SDMT. Results Persons with MS reported significantly more severe visual discomfort symptoms on the VDQ than HCs (W = 424, p Conclusions Visual discomfort symptoms may impact/interfere with SDMT performance in persons with MS. When determining information processing speed deficits using the SDMT, visual discomfort symptoms need to be considered. Author(s) Disclosures Authors declare no conflicts of interest.