‘Usual suspect’ lesions appear not to cause most severe disability in MS patients
Brain lesions — areas of brain tissue that show damage from injury or disease — are the biomarker most widely used to determine multiple sclerosis disease progression. But a new study led by the University at Buffalo strongly suggests that the volume of white matter lesions is neither proportional to, nor indicative of, the degree of severe disability in patients.
The results were reported in a poster session on February 24 at the annual meeting of the Americas Committee for Treatment and Research of Multiple Sclerosis (ACTRIMS) in San Diego.
The study compared two sets of 53 MS patients each, ages 30-80, who had the same gender and disease duration but vast and measurable differences in the extent of their physical and cognitive disabilities.
The results are from a study led by UB that has begun to investigate why a small percentage of people with MS quickly become severely disabled while in others the disease progresses much more slowly.
The individuals in the severely disabled cohort are residents of The Boston Home in Dorchester, Massachusetts, a specialized residential facility for individuals with advanced progressive neurological disorders including MS.
Each of them was then matched with a Buffalo-based “twin” of the same age, sex and disease duration but who experienced far less cognitive and physical disability.
