Objectives As brain tumours and their treatment may theoretically have a poorer prognosis in inflammatory central nervous system diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS), all-cause mortality following a brain tumour diagnosis was compared between patients with and without MS. The potential role of age at tumour diagnosis was also examined.

Setting Hospital inpatients in Sweden with assessment of mortality in hospital or following discharge.

Participants Swedish national registers identified 20 543 patients with an MS diagnosis (1969–2005) and they were matched individually to produce a comparison cohort of 204 163 members of the general population without MS. Everyone with a primary brain tumour diagnosis was selected for this study: 111 with MS and 907 without MS.

Primary and secondary outcome measures 5-year mortality risk following brain tumour diagnosis and age at brain tumour diagnosis.

Results A non-statistically significant lower mortality risk among patients with MS (lower for those with tumours of high-grade and uncertain-grade malignancy and no notable difference for low-grade tumours) produced an unadjusted HR (and 95% CI) of 0.75 (0.56 to 1.02). After adjustment for age at diagnosis, grade of malignancy, sex, region of residence and socioeconomic index, the HR is 0.91 (0.67–1.24). The change in estimate was largely due to adjustment for age at brain tumour diagnosis, as patients with MS were on average 4.7 years younger at brain tumour diagnosis than those in the comparison cohort (p<0.001).

Conclusions Younger age at tumour diagnosis may contribute to mortality reduction in those with high-grade and uncertain-grade brain tumours. Survival following a brain tumour is not worse in patients with MS; even after age at brain tumour diagnosis and grade of malignancy are taken into account.