Multiple Sclerosis Community

Have you ever been bewildered by the fact that your most recent MRIs show no new lesion or inflammatory activity that explains your worsened disabilities?

Me, too. I just found some data on cortical grey matter lesions.
Don't feel dumb that you haven't heard much about lesions in this part of the brain. My neuros haven't mentioned it, either.

Our 1.5T and 3T MRIs aren't strong enough to detect them. Until recently, they were only discovered during autopsies where dissected slices of cortex were eye-balled and the lesions easily spotted.

Since these unlucky subjects died during late-stage MS, researchers assumed that grey matter cortical lesions come along during the advanced portion of the progressive stage of MS.

Now, however, that thinking has changed. There are 7T, 8T, and 9.4T MRIs being used in research that can clearly show these cortical lesions in live patients--and they popping up in many RRMS patients rather early on in the disease process.

Time will tell, but it's looking like these lesions can be linked to physical disability and cognitive dysfunction in a way that white matter lesions alone cannot.


Below is a link to Medhelp expert Quixotic1 (she is a retired doctor with MS) who explains clearly the interconnectivity of grey matter and white matter, how they conduct signals, and what happens when myelin gets damaged.


http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Multiple-Sclerosis/White-vs-Grey-matter/show/785945?controller=posts&action=show&id=#<Subject:0x00000021e0f968>

(If this doesn't hyperlink, just copy and paste it into your browser.)

I hear your burning question: When will we have access to these super-sensitive MRI tools? Not for years, I'm guessing. We'll have to wait.

Not the least reason being, and I think I speak for all MS patients when I say this---that I'll pass on the autopsy.

Kim