MRI Correlates of Disability in African-Americans with Multiple Sclerosis

作者：Howard Jonathan^*; Battaglini Marco; Babb James Scott; Arienzo Donatello; Holst Brigitte; Omari Mirza; De Stefano Nicola; Herbert Joseph; Inglese Matilde

来源：PLos One, 2012, 7(8): e43061.

DOI：10.1371/journal.pone.0043061

Objectives: Multiple sclerosis (MS) in African-Americans (AAs) is characterized by more rapid disease progression and poorer response to treatment than in Caucasian-Americans (CAs). MRI provides useful and non-invasive tools to investigate the pathological substrate of clinical progression. The aim of our study was to compare MRI measures of brain damage between AAs and CAs with MS. %26lt;br%26gt;Methods: Retrospective analysis of 97 AAs and 97 CAs with MS matched for age, gender, disease duration and age at MRI examination. %26lt;br%26gt;Results: AA patients had significantly greater T2- (p = 0.001) and T1-weighted (p = 0.0003) lesion volumes compared to CA patients. In contrast, measurements of global and regional brain volume did not significantly differ between the two ethnic groups (p%26gt;0.1). %26lt;br%26gt;Conclusions: By studying a quite large sample of well demographically and clinically matched CA and AA patients with a homogeneous MRI protocol we showed that higher lesion accumulation, rather than pronounced brain volume decrease might explain the early progress to ambulatory assistance of AAs with MS.

• 出版日期2012-8-10