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Spinal cord atrophy and disability in multiple sclerosis over four years

¹ Division of Medical Physics, University of Leicester, Leicester Royal Infirmary, Leicester LE1 5WW, UK
² Neuroimaging Research Unit, Scientific Institute Ospedale S Raffaele, Via Olgettina 60, Milan, Italy

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Mark A. Horsfield;
mah5@le.ac.uk

Keywords: multiple sclerosis; spinal cord atrophy; disability

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

It is natural to focus on spinal cord damage as a major factor in disability. Indeed, interest in the use of MRI to study the spinal cord in multiple sclerosis, and its relation to locomotor disability, has been on the increase for over 10 years. The paper by Lin et al (pp 1090–1094)¹ is the first medium term follow up (four years) of spinal cord atrophy in both untreated patients and patients treated with interferon ß-1a.

Initial studies of the cord concentrated on the visible lesions seen with conventional MRI, and results were perhaps disappointing, with little direct influence of acute and chronic damage as seen on conventional T2 weighted scans. More recently, with methods capable of detecting more subtle abnormalities such as magnetisation transfer imaging or T1 mapping, stronger correlations (albeit still weak) with expanded disability status scale (EDSS) scores are emerging.² It is . . . [Full text of this article]

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