Vision and Vision-Related Measures in Progressive Multiple Sclerosis

Conclusions: ON still leaves its mark in the patient's visual system over time, with all visual measures of the affected eyes notably reduced compared to fellow eyes. Motion perception, reflecting myelination level along the visual pathway, shows its usefulness also in progressive MS. In the non-ON eyes, axonal loss appears to explain prolonged latencies, unlike in ON eyes, where demyelination appears to be the main mechanism. Lastly, the visual measures assessed herein are applicable as valid assessment tools in therapeutic studies. Introduction Over the last few years there has been growing interest in the use of visual measures as useful tools for multiple sclerosis (MS) prognosis and tracking. Optic neuritis (ON) being such a prevalent and often-presenting symptom of the disease, as well as the high occurrence rate of posterior visual system damage independent of ON (optic radiation lesions), make the visual system a prime candidate for such endeavors (1, 2). Current studies make use of a wide variety of visual measures, from behavioral tests such as low-contrast letter acuity (LCLA) (3) and motion perception (4), through imaging methods such as optical coherence tomography (OCT) (5–8) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) (9, 10), to the electrophysiological visual evoked potential (VEP) test (11). However, most previous studies dealing with visual tools in MS focused on acute cases of ON and early-stage MS, looking at different aspects of myelin ...
Source: Frontiers in Neurology - Category: Neurology Source Type: research