Cognitive complaints in women with fibromyalgia: Are they due to depression or to objective cognitive dysfunction?

Introduction: Cognitive complaints are common in fibromyalgia, but it is unclear whether they represent an objective cognitive dysfunction or whether they could be explained by depressive symptoms. Here, we aim to elucidate the frequency of subjective cognitive complaints in a sample of women with fibromyalgia, in addition to analyzing associations between these subjective complaints and objective measures linked to the attention and executive cognitive domains. Finally, we aim to investigate the ability of demographic, clinical, and psychological variables to explain the subjective complaints observed.

Method: One hundred and five women aged 30-55 years diagnosed with fibromyalgia completed a neuropsychological assessment, which included measures of attention and executive functions. They also completed self-report inventories of subjective cognitive complaints, depression, anxiety, intensity of pain, sleep quality, everyday physical functioning, and quality of life.

Results: Eighty-four percent of the patients reported subjective cognitive complaints. Depression scores, everyday physical functioning, and working memory performance were most strongly associated with subjective cognitive complaints. These three variables were significant predictors for subjective cognitive complaints with a final model explaining 32% of the variance.

Conclusions: Cognitive complaints are very frequent in patients with fibromyalgia, and these are related to functional and cognitive impairment as well as to depressive symptoms.