Measurement of the cross-sectional area of the cervical spinal cord could aid the tracking of disease progression in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), according to research published in NeuroImage: Clinical. A team at the University of Campinas, Brazil performed brain and spinal cord MRI scans at baseline and 8 months later in 27 patients with ALS and 27 healthy controls. Of the various MRI-based parameters that were assessed, cervical spinal cord area reduction was found to be the most sensitive to longitudinal changes on the ALS Functional Rating Scale-Revised, which detects clinical deterioration in patients with ALS. The researchers conclude that spinal cord morphometry could provide a useful biomarker for longitudinal change in ALS, particularly in the later stages when brain degeneration might have plateaued.
References
de Albuquerque, M. et al. Longitudinal evaluation of cerebral and spinal cord damage in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Neuroimage Clin. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2017.01.024 (2017)
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Wood, H. Spinal cord morphometry — a promising technique to track disease course in ALS. Nat Rev Neurol 13, 129 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2017.21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2017.21