Evolution of Cortical and Thalamus Atrophy and Disability Progression in Early Relapsing-Remitting MS during 5 Years

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Pathologic changes in GM have an important role in MS. We investigated the association between SDGM and cortical volume changes and disability progression in early RRMS.

Subcortical Deep Gray Matter Pathology in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis Is Associated with White Matter Lesion Burden and Atrophy but Not with Cortical Atrophy: A Diffusion Tensor MRI Study

“…It has been shown that development of gray matter pathology is associated with the progression of physical and cognitive disability in both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. [1][2][3][4][8][9][10][11][12]20,31 In this study, we used DTI on 3T MR imaging to investigate structural brain changes in a large cohort of HC patients and patients with MS. Then, we focused on the SDGM structures to investigate the association between their DTI alterations and lesion burden, white matter, and cortical atrophy among the study groups. To better evaluate the microstructural damage of SDGM structures, we studied the diffusivity in the axial and radial directions to detect differences that may be underestimated by the MD measures.…”

“…[1][2][3][4][5] Cortical and subcortical deep gray matter (SDGM) atrophy occurs also in the early stages of MS, and disability progression is significantly influenced by the neuronal loss of the gray matter. [6][7][8] Atrophy of the SDGM structures is associated with disability progression and cognitive dysfunctions and can also predict the conversion to clinically definite MS. [9][10][11][12] An increasing body of evidence suggests that the atrophy of cortical and SDGM structures is associated with white matter lesion burden, 13 but the underlying pathophysiologic processes remain poorly understood. Secondary Wallerian degeneration is certainly implicated in neuronal damage of gray matter structures; however, it seems unlikely to be the sole cause of gray matter pathology.…”

Time for Change – Evolution of Real-world Evidence Outcome Measures in Multiple Sclerosis Exemplified by Fingolimod

“…[24][25][26][27][28][29][30] yielded important insights into understanding the natural history of brain atrophy development under DMTs. This is one of few studies that used the same scanner without hardware or software changes to acquire serial yearly scans over 10 consecutive years.…”

Evaluating the Effects of White Matter Multiple Sclerosis Lesions on the Volume Estimation of 6 Brain Tissue Segmentation Methods

“…[1][2][3] However, white matter lesions (WMLs) can significantly affect tissue volume measurements if these lesions are included in the segmentation process. [4][5][6] Several studies have analyzed the effects of WMLs on brain tissue measurements of common segmentation techniques such as SPM5 (http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/) 7 and FMRIB Automated Segmentation Tool (FAST, http://fsl.…”

“…fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fsl/fslwiki/FAST). 8 Chard et al 5 studied the effect of synthetic lesions on SPM5 segmentations for different WML voxel intensities (from 30% to 90% of normal WM intensity) and lesion loads (from 10 to 20 cm 3 ). The authors reported that GM volume was overestimated by Ϸ2.3%, whereas WM tissue was underestimated by Ϸ3.6% in scans with 15 cm 3 of simulated lesions.…”