May 18, 2011 (Montreal, Quebec) — Brain and spinal cord atrophy in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) correlates with the phenotype of the disease and the degree of disability, according to 2 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies presented here at the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 19th Annual Meeting and Exhibition.
Both imaging studies point to the future value of MRI in monitoring disease progression and treatment response, suggest the authors.
In the first long-term follow-up of MS patients, conducted over a 10-year period, researchers showed an average loss in brain volume of 5% in 47 patients, compared with a 3% loss in 11 control subjects, reported Antonio Giorgio, MD, from the Department of Neurological and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Siena, Italy.
The mean age of the patients was 37 years; the mean age of the control subjects was 42 years. Mean disease duration was 4.7 years. The majority of patients (n = 40) had the relapsing-remitting phenotype of the disease, 5 had the secondary-progressive phenotype, and 2 had the primary-progressive phenotype.
Conventional MRI performed at baseline and again after 10 years measured global brain volume, normalized white matter (nWM) volume,
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