Yongxia Zhou1,
Hanzhang Lu2, Feng Xu2, Damon Kenul1, Hina
Jaggi1, Joseph Herbert3, Ilya Kister4,
Robert I. Grossman5, Yulin Ge1
1Radiology/Center
for Biomedical Imaging, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York,
NY, United States; 2University of Texas Southwestern Medical
Center, Dallas, TX, United States; 3Multiple Sclerosis
Comprehensive Care Center, New York University, New York, NY, United States; 4Multiple
Sclerosis Comprehensive Care Center, New York University Langone Medical
Center, New York, NY, United States; 5Radiology/Center for
Biomedical Imaging, New York University, New York, NY, United States
The objective of this study was to examine whether there is cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) impairment in patients with relapsing-remitting MS using hypercapnia (mixed 5%CO2, 21%O2, and 74%N2) perfusion (i.e. pseudo-continuous arterial spin labeling, pCASL) MRI. Cerebral blood flow (CBF) was measured using pCASL at baseline and with 5% CO2 hypercapnia at 3T MR in twenty-one patients and 20 age-matched healthy controls. There was a significant decrease of whole brain parenchymal CVR in MS compared to controls (P=0.01), indicating an impaired vascular response to hypercapnia in MS patients. The global CVR changes correlate with lesion load in these patients.