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Updated: Dec 25, 2025
Utility of Dissociated Intrinsic Hand Muscle Atrophy in the Diagnosis of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis
Published on: March 4, 2014
MRI study of paraspinal muscles in patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)
Luca Diamanti1, Matteo Paoletti1, Umberto Di Vita2
1IRCCS Mondino Foundation, 27100 Pavia, Italy.
Background:
the study of paraspinal muscles is pivotal for the diagnosis and staging of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), and is usually performed by electromyography.
Objective:
to evaluate the role of paraspinal muscle MRI as a diagnostic biomarker in ALS.
Methods:
we evaluated T1-w images of newly diagnosed ALS patients (n = 14), age-matched healthy controls (n = 11), patients affected by inflammatory myopathy (n = 10), and lumbar radiculopathy (n = 19), and compared them semiquantitatively by using the Mercuri Scale.
Results:
a significant difference in the appearance of the psoas muscle was observed between ALS patients and patients with radiculopathy (p = 0.003); after stratifying ALS patients into spinal and bulbar onsets, we found a significant difference in the appearance of the longissimus dorsi muscle between the spinal onset ALS subgroup and bulbar onset ALS subgroup (p = 0.0245), while no difference was found for multifidus (p = 0.1441), iliocostal (p = 0.0655), and psoas muscles (p = 0.0813) between the cohort subgroups.
Conclusions:
paraspinal T1-w MRI could help to distinguish spinal ALS patients from healthy and pathological controls. Specifically, the study of longissimus dorsi could play the role of a diagnostic ALS biomarker.
