Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 13, 2026
Dynamic Visual Tests to Identify and Quantify Visual Damage and Repair Following Demyelination in Optic Neuritis Patients
Published on: April 14, 2014
Retinal axonal loss in very early stages of multiple sclerosis
A-H Maghzi1, J Graves1, N Revirajan1
1Department of Neurology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.
Background And Purpose:
The lack of surrogates of clinical progression has limited the design of neuroprotection trials in multiple sclerosis (MS). Our aim was to study the association between time-domain optical coherence tomography measures and clinical and magnetic resonance imaging outcomes in early MS.
Methods:
Forty-three relapsing-remitting MS patients within 1 year of onset were followed for up to 3 years.
Results:
The peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) decreased annually by 2 μm (95% confidence interval -3.89, -0.11; P = 0.038). The RNFL tended to be associated with normalized normal appearing white matter volume in cross-sectional (P = 0.08) and longitudinal analyses (P = 0.06).
Conclusions:
There is substantial RNFL loss even in very early MS. Our data suggest that retinal axonal atrophy is associated with atrophy in global white matter volume in early MS.
