Independent risk factors for myasthenic crisis and disease exacerbation in a retrospective cohort of myasthenia gravis patients

Table 2 Risk factors for MC and exacerbation—Multivariate analysis

	Odds ratio	95%CI	p-value
MC
Age at diagnosis	1.01	0.87–1.25	0.32
Sex	0.96	0.81–1.43	0.86
QMG score at diagnosis	1.23	1.14–1.66	< 0.0001
MGFA status at diagnosis	1.83	1.65–1.97	< 0.0001
Anti-MuSK-ab	2.18	1.76–2.59	0.02
Thymoma	3.71	3.01–4.41	< 0.0001
Cardiovascular disease	1.29	0.72–1.66	0.35
Heart failure (any cause)	1.11	0.71–1.78	0.48
Pulmonary disease	1.36	0.88–1.44	0.25
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease	1.41	0.91–1.48	0.11
Exacerbation
Sex	0.82	0.66–1.17	0.24
Age at diagnosis	1.03	0.76–1.51	0.45
Generalized disease at diagnosis	1.83	1.23–2.39	0.03
QMG score at diagnosis	1.12	1.09–1.44	< 0.0001
MGFA status at diagnosis	1.03	0.75–1.48	0.11
Anti-MuSK-ab	1.07	1.01–1.28	0.003
Thymoma	1.64	1.29–2.07	0.02
Pulmonary disease	1.22	0.71–1.47	0.32
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease	1.32	0.92–1.41	0.12

Risk factors for MC and exacerbation in multivariate Cox regression analysis. anti-Musk-ab anti-muscle-specific tyrosine kinase-ab, MGFA Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America, SD standard deviation, QMG quantitative myasthenia gravis score. Variables with a p-value < 0.05 in the univariate analysis and clinically relevant variables (sex, age) were included in the multivariate analysis. For highly collinear factors (thymoma, thymectomy and imaging suspect for thymoma as well as age at onset, age at diagnosis and early onset) we included only one variable to avoid overfitting. Risk is presented as odds ratio. A p-value below 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Statistically significant results are bold. 95% CI = 95% confidence interval

ISSN: 1742-2094