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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.