Retinal small vessel pathology is associated with disease burden in multiple sclerosis

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Fundus Photography as a Convenient Tool to Study Microvascular Responses to Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors in Epidemiological Studies
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Fundus Photography as a Convenient Tool to Study Microvascular Responses to Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors in Epidemiological Studies

Published on: October 22, 2014

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Rebecca Wicklein1, Linus Kreitner2, Anna Wild1

  • 1Department of Neurology, Klinikum rechts der Isar, TUM School of Medicine and Health, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany.

Multiple Sclerosis (Houndmills, Basingstoke, England)
|May 16, 2024
PubMed
Abstract

Insights

Multiple sclerosis (MS) causes distinct retinal vessel changes. Small vessel loss occurs in all MS patients, while medium vessel loss is linked to optic neuritis history and ganglion cell loss.

Area of Science:

  • Ophthalmology
  • Neurology
  • Medical Imaging

Background:

  • Superficial retinal vascular alterations are common in multiple sclerosis (MS).
  • Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) allows visualization of these changes.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate retinal vascular changes in MS patients.
  • To correlate these vascular changes with MS pathology and optic neuritis (ON) history.

Main Methods:

  • Cross-sectional study of 259 relapsing-remitting MS patients and 78 healthy controls.
  • Analysis of OCTA images using deep-learning-based segmentation algorithms.

Main Results:

  • A loss of small-sized vessels (< 10 µm) in the superficial vascular complex was observed in all MS eyes, independent of ON history and associated with disease burden.
  • A reduction in medium-sized vessels (10-20 µm) was specific to eyes with ON history and correlated with retinal ganglion cell atrophy.

Conclusions:

  • MS patients exhibit distinct patterns of retinal vessel atrophy.
  • Further research is needed to elucidate the underlying pathology of these retinal vessel alterations in MS.
Keywords:
Multiple sclerosisdeep learningneuroophthalmologyoptical coherence tomography angiographypathophysiologyretinal microvasculature

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