Mingqiang Xie1, Matthew D. Budde2, Chin-I Chen2, Kathryn Trinkaus3, Regina C. Armstrong4, Anne H. Cross5, Sheng-Kwei Song2
1Radiology, Washington University, St. Louis , MO, USA; 2Radiology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA; 3Biostatistics, Washington University, St. Louis, MO; 4Anatomy, Physiology, and Genetics, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, MD, USA; 5Neurology and Neurosurgery, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA
Decreased axial diffusivity from DTI has recently been used as a noninvasive biomarker for detecting axonal injury. The current study compared axial diffusivity with histology of YFP mouse corpus callosum (CC) throughout cuprizone-induced demyelination. Decreased axial diffusivity, axonal injury and increased microglia/macrophages at 4 weeks of cuprizone ingestion, and then they returned to the control level at 10 weeks of continuous treatment. In contrast, astrogliosis increased at 4 weeks and further increased at 10 weeks. The results demonstrate that decreased axial diffusivity mirrors the reversible nature of axonal injury and microglia/macrophage infiltration in cuprizone-treated mouse CC, and is not related to astrogliosis.