According to a new study, growth of Multiple Sclerosis can be determined by eye scans showing the retinal thinning, reports Medical Xpress.
The study conducted includes 164 patients with multiple sclerosis who had their eye scans done every six months and also MRI brain scans at the start of the study and later annually.
According to the scan reports, during the 21-month study, patients who had multiple sclerosis relapse had 42 percent faster retinal thinning than those who did not have relapses, said a report in Medical Xpress.
The scan reports also revealed that MS patients with active inflammation known as gadolinium-enhancing lesions had 54 percent faster retinal thinning compared to those with no such lesions trace in their MRI scans. Researchers further found that MS patients had 37 percent faster retinal thinning whose disability levels were worse during the study than those who experienced no change in their disability levels, according to Medical Xpress.
"As more therapies are developed to slow the progression of MS, testing retinal thinning in the eyes may be helpful in evaluating how effective those therapies are," study author Dr. Peter Calabresi, of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in a journal news release, according to Medical Xpress.
"This study reports an important link between the inflammatory and neurodegenerative aspects of MS that should lead to a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of tissue damage," said Dr. Fred Lublin, director of the Corinne Goldsmith Dickinson Center for Multiple Sclerosis at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York City, who was not involved in the study. "The techniques described may add to our ability to better perform studies of neuroprotective agents in MS."
Dr. Floyd Warren, chief of neuro-ophthalmology at Lenox Hill Hospital, in New York City, agrees that eye scans can be used effectively to determine new treatments and drugs to eradicate the disease.
"Further studies with larger numbers of progressive MS patients will need to be done to see if it proves as (potentially) a reliable marker in these patients," he said.
The study will be published 1 January, in an online journal Neurology.
