White Matter loss also correlates with cognitive problems

Epub: Francis et al. Extensive White Matter Dysfunction in Cognitively Impaired Patients with Secondary-ProgressiveMultiple Sclerosis. AJNR Am J Neuroradiol. 2014.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Cognitive impairment is a common, disabling symptom of MS. We investigated the association between cognitive impairment and WM dysfunction in secondary-progressive multiple sclerosis using DTI.


MATERIALS AND METHODS: Cognitive performance was assessed with a standard neuropsychological battery, the Minimal Assessment of Cognitive Function in Multiple Sclerosis. Cognitive impairment was defined as scoring >1.5 standard deviations below healthy controls on ≥2 subtests. Fractional anisotropy maps were compared against cognitive status using tract-based spatial statistics with threshold-free cluster enhancement.


RESULTS: Forty-five patients with secondary-progressive multiple sclerosis (median age: 55 years, female/male: 27/18, median Expanded Disability Status Scale Score: 6.5) were prospectively recruited. Cognitively impaired patients (25/45) displayed significantly less normalized global GM and WM volumes (P = .001, P = .024), more normalized T2-weighted and T1-weighted WM lesion volumes (P = .002, P = .006), and lower WM skeleton fractional anisotropy (P < .001) than non-impaired patients. Impaired patients also had significantly lower fractional anisotropy (pcorr < .05) in over 50% of voxels within every major WM tract. The most extensively impinged tracts were the left posterior thalamic radiation (100.0%), corpus callosum (97.8%), and right sagittal stratum (97.5%). No WM voxels had significantly higher fractional anisotropy in patients with cognitive impairment compared with their non-impaired counterparts (pcorr > .05). After the inclusion of confounders in a multivariate logistic regression, only fractional anisotropy remained a significant predictor of cognitive status.


CONCLUSIONS: Cognitively impaired patients with secondary-progressive multiple sclerosis exhibited extensive WM dysfunction, though preferential involvement of WM tracts associated with cognition, such as the corpus callosum, was apparent. Only WM skeleton fractional anisotropy was a significant predictor of cognitive status
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People with Cognitive Problems have lost white matter


Fractional anisotropy (FA) is a scalar value between zero and one that describes the degree of anisotropy of a diffusion process. A value of zero means that diffusion is isotropic, i.e. it is unrestricted (or equally restricted) in all directions. A value of one means that diffusion occurs only along one axis and is fully restricted along all other directions. FA is a measure often used in diffusion imaging where it is thought to reflect fibre density, axonal diameter, and myelination in white matter.

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