Abstract Details

Title Clinical disability and slowly expanding lesions in relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis patients

Topic Multiple Sclerosis

Presentation(s) MS and CNS Inflammatory Disease Posters (7:00 AM-5:00 PM)

Poster/Presentation
Number 155

Objective To investigate the association between clinical disability, as measured by the Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS), and slowly expanding lesions (SELs) as measured on phase images in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients.

Background Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a non-invasive imaging technique used to visualize and quantify changes in brain tissues. Inflammatory demyelination associated with MS can lead to slowly expanding lesions which can be visualized in MRI scans. EDSS is a widely accepted clinical tool used to monitor disease progression by assessing the functional systems of MS patients.

Design/Methods We retrospectively analyzed MRI scans from one hundred seven MS patients and identified SELs. Each patient underwent a neurological examination, including an EDSS assessment, and whole brain MRI scan on a SIEMENS 3T Verio scanner. The MRI protocol included 2D T2 fluid attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) sequence, pre and post contrast T1 weighted (T1W) sequence and susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI) sequences. Slowly expanding lesions were identified when they presented with a hypointense paramagnetic rim signal on filtered phase images in SWI sequences and were not presented as Gad-enhancing lesions on post contrast T1W images. The number of SELs was estimated on each scan. The association between the number of SELs and EDSS was analyzed using Spearman’s correlation in SPSS v26.

Results The median (IQR) EDSS was 2.3 (1.5-5.0 range). The median (IQR) number of SELs was 6.0 (2.0-9.0 SELs). Our data revealed that clinical disability is significantly correlated with slowly expanding lesions (r=0.234, p<0.017). Disease duration, however, was not found to be significantly correlated with the number of SELs (r=0.075, p=0.452).

Conclusions Our findings indicate that SELs might represent a useful biomarker associated with worse MS outcomes, as measured by EDSS. Our study may provide more insight into utility of SELs as a prognostic measure, which should be investigated further.

Authors/Disclosures
Madeline Bross (Wayne State University) PRESENTER	Ms. Bross has nothing to disclose.
Fen Bao	Fen Bao has nothing to disclose.
Samuel Lichtman-Mikol, BA (Wayne State University)	Mr. Lichtman-Mikol has nothing to disclose.
	No disclosure on file
Jacob C. Rube, MD (University Health Center)	Dr. Rube has nothing to disclose.
Carla E. Santiago-Martinez (Wayne State University)	Ms. Santiago-Martinez has nothing to disclose.
Samiksha Srivastava, MD (Wayne State University)	Dr. Srivastava has nothing to disclose.
Evanthia Bernitsas, MD, FAAN (Wayne State School of Medicine)	Dr. Bernitsas has received personal compensation in the range of $5,000-$9,999 for serving as a Consultant for Amgen. Dr. Bernitsas has received personal compensation in the range of $500-$4,999 for serving on a Speakers Bureau for Vanda. The institution of Dr. Bernitsas has received research support from Roche/Genentech.

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