Predictive ability of motion sickness susceptibility questionnaire for seasickness individual difference in Chinese military personnel

Abstract Background Motion sickness susceptibility questionnaire (MSSQ) has been widely used for assessing individual differences in motion sickness. The present study tried to investigate its efficacy for predicting seasickness susceptible (SUS) and insusceptible (INSUS) subjects among Chinese military personnel. Methods Two cohorts of young male army volunteers were exposed to real ship motion (n=125) and laboratory vertical oscillation motion (n=77). Predictive ability of the MSSQ and its vomiting (MSV) and nausea (MSN) subscales (including child and adult subitems) was examined via analyzing area under the curve (AUC) of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) with seasickness susceptibility defined by Graybiel score or nausea latency. Results Higher Graybiel scores and lower percentage of INSUS subjects was observed in the ship motion trial than the vertical oscillation trial. MSSQ and its subscales positively correlated with the Graybiel score in both trials. The MSN child showed no predictive ability for the INSUS subjects, leading to lower AUC of the MSN than the MSSQ and the MSV for INSUS prediction in ship motion (0.587 vs. 0.647 and 0.644, P < 0.01) and vertical oscillation trial (0.696 vs. 0.761 and 0.788, P < 0.01 and 0.05) when seasickness susceptibility was defined by Graybiel score. Lower AUC in the MSN than the MSSQ (0.691 vs. 0.758, P < 0.05 and 0.01) was observed due to invalidity of MSN child when susceptibility was defined by nausea latency in the vertical oscillation trial. The prediction ability of SUS did not differ among the MSSQ and its subscales in both trials. Relative to the ship motion trial, the vertical oscillation trial showed higher predictive efficacy of the MSSQ for the Graybiel score-defined SUS subjects (0.840 vs. 0.686, P < 0.05) as a result of higher AUC in both the MSV (0.840 vs. 0.690, P < 0.05) and the MSN (0.806 vs. 0.651, P < 0.01). Conclusions The MSSQ was effective for predicting seasickness susceptibility in young male Chinese military members, but the efficacy varies with motion intensity and complexity and the vomiting scale should be recommended for application.