Magnetic resonance, magnetisation transfer, and diffusion weighted imaging correlates of optic nerve, brain, and cervical cord damage in Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy
- Division of Clinical Neurology, University Hospital, Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham NG7 2UH, UK
- nnxcl{at}nnnl.med.nottingham.ac.uk
The association between Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy and multiple sclerosis has encouraged the search for susceptibility genes in multiple sclerosis. This symbiotic relation is reversed in the paper by Inglese et al 1 (this issue, pp444–449) in which magnetic resonance (MR) techniques originally developed for studying multiple sclerosis were applied to patients with Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy. The authors aimed to quantify the amount of optic nerve damage, and, more interestingly, detect the degree of pathological change in the brain, in a disease often thought in its isolated form to be highly tissue specific for the optic pathways.
Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy is probably the most studied disease caused by mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mutations. It usually results in bilateral and …
