Yulin Ge1, Zhongwei
Zhang1, Hanzhang Lu2, Lin Tang1, Hina Jaggi1,
James Babb1, Joseph Herbert3, Robert I. Grossman1
1Department of
Radiology, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York City, NY,
USA; 2Advanced Imaging Research Center, University of Texas
Southwestern Medical Center; 3Department of Neurology, New York
University Langone Medical Center, New York City, NY, USA
Using a newly developed T2-relaxation-under-spin-tagging (TRUST) MRI, a novel noninvasive technique for measuring brain venous sinus blood oxygenation (Yv), we have investigated the global oxygen metabolism changes in patients with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (MS). We found significantly increased Yv in patients (mean/SD: 64.2/5.1%) as compared to control subjects (mean/SD: 59.6/4.8%), and Yv has significant correlation with the total lesion load (r=0.44, P=0.03), but not with brain atrophy. Our findings suggest that significant underutilization of oxygen in MS might reflect the diffuse neuronal cells inactive state due to chronic and diffuse nature of the disease rather than parenchyma tissue loss.