A Longitudinal Study of Callosal Atrophy and Interhemispheric Dysfunction in Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis

Abstract

Patients who had relapsing-remitting MS in the early stages of the disease and mild disability had significant callosal involvement that progressed over time. The relationship between disability, T2-weighted lesions load, and degree of morphological and functional callosal impairment confirm the potential value of using callosal dysfunction as a surrogate marker of disease progression in MS.

Fatigue and progression of corpus callosum atrophy in multiple sclerosis

“…Among others, we recently showed that CC atrophy correlates with progression of disability in MS [29,36,41]. In recent decades, several studies could demonstrate cognitive dysfunction in patients with CC abnormalities not only due to MS [11,26,32].…”

Classifying minimally disabled multiple sclerosis patients from resting state functional connectivity

“…Taken together, these findings highlight the importance of considering intrahemispheric connections when analysing functional connectivity in MS, even in resting-state conditions. We cannot exclude the possibility, however, that the relatively high significance of intra-hemispheric pathways (compared to interhemispheric pathways) may reflect the minimal disability in our patients, given the known association between callosal atrophy and disease progression (Pelletier et al, 2001).…”

Intact Subliminal Processing and Delayed Conscious Access in Multiple Sclerosis

“…At the early stage of MS, numerous studies have demonstrated diffuse white matter injury, characterized by macroscopic but also microscopic tissue damage (Miller, Thompson, & Filippi, 2003). In particular diffuse injury has recently been described in the corpus callosum -a structure composed solely of long inter-hemispheric associative fibersin patients with relapsing remitting MS Pelletier et al, 2001;Ranjeva et al, 2003). We previously demonstrated, using voxel-based analysis of brain magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) maps, a sensitive technique allowing to evidence subtle tissue injury outside T 2 visible lesions, that in patients with early MS, long range white matter tracts were significantly injured, without diffuse injury in the cortex (Ranjeva et al, 2004).…”