Increasing age is independently associated with higher free water in non-active MS brain - A multi-compartment analysis using FAST-T2

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) includes both inflammatory demyelination and axonal degeneration, which may affect the tissue water fractions of brain parenchyma in both myelin and the CSF water compartments. Quantification of brain parenchyma CSF fraction (CSFF) may help us better understanding of this complicated neurodegenerative disease. Aging is the most common cause of neurodegenerations. Here we tested CSFF in a 111 non-active MS cohort (age:45-79 years) by using the multi-echo T2 relaxometry-based multiple water-compartment method. Multivariate multiple regression shows that in cortical gray matter CSFF increases with age by controlling other factors including gender, disease duration, and MS lesion burden.