J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 2003 Jul;74(7):950-2
Pelletier D, Nelson SJ, Oh J, Antel JP, Kita M, Zamvil SS, Goodkin
DE.
Department of Neurology, University of California at San Francisco,
CA, USA Department of Radiology, University of California at San Francisco
Department of Neurology, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
OBJECTIVES:
To investigate whether axonal damage in primary progressive (PP) multiple sclerosis (MS), as measured by proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (HMRS) imaging and brain atrophy, is a function of T2 weighted brain lesion volume.
METHODS:
34 PP MS patients were divided into two categories: low (<3 cm(3), n = 18) or high (>/=3 cm(3), n = 16) T2 lesion load (LL).
An Index of Brain Atrophy (IBA) was calculated and HMRS metabolite ratios were derived from a central brain area centred at the corpus callosum.
RESULTS:
Patient groups did not differ with regard to clinical characteristics and showed lower mean IBA and mean N-acetylaspartate:creatinine (NAA:Cr) ratios compared to healthy controls.
CONCLUSION:
PP patients with low and high brain T2LL have detectable brain atrophy and NAA:Cr reduction compared to healthy controls.
In PP MS, T2 lesions alone are insufficient to explain the presence of brain atrophy and decrease in NAA:Cr.