Abstract #0043

Impaired Regulation of the Blood Supply to the Brain in Multiple Sclerosis Measured with Hypercapnia BOLD MRI

Yulin Ge¹, Hanzhang Lu², Yongxia Zhou³, Feng Xu², Ilya Kister⁴, Hina Jaggi³, Joseph Herbert⁵, Robert I. Grossman⁶

¹Radiology, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, United States; ²Advanced Imaging Research Center, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States; ³Radiology, NYU Langone Medical Center, New York, United States; ⁴Neurology, NYU Langone Medical Center, New York, United States; ⁵Neurology, New York University, New York, United States; ⁶Radiology, New York University, New York, United States

Normal neuronal activity is tightly linked to and critically depends on the increase of blood flow for instantaneous supply of oxygen and glucose. This study is to evaluate whether there is cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) impairment in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) using hypercapnia BOLD MRI. Our findings of significant decrease of CVR in MS patients suggest an impaired vascular regulation of blood flow supply or defect neurocoupling mechanism, which may affect effective oxygen delivery particularly to the previously healthy and normal neurons and lead to neurodegeneration over time.