Yulin Ge1,
Yongxia Zhou2, Hanzhang Lu3, Feng Xu3, Ilya
Kister4, Hina Jaggi2, Damon Kenul2, Joseph
Herbert5, Robert I. Grossman6
1Radiology,
New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, United States; 2Radiology,
NYU Medical Center, New York, United States; 32Advanced Imaging
Research Center, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States; 4Neurology,
NYU Medical Center, New York, United States; 5Neurology, New York
University, New York, United States; 6Radiology, New York
University, New York, United States
The cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) may be impaired due to chronic and tonically higher level of nitric oxide (NO) secondary to the repetitive inflammatory activities in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). This may lead to defective instantaneous oxygen supply to active neurons leading to chronic hypoxia and neurodegeneration. Using mild hypercapnia (mixed 5%CO2, 21%O2, and 74%N2) perfusion MRI at 3T MR, we found significant decrease of average global CVR of gray matter and normal appearing white matter in MS patients using psudo-continuous arterial spin labeling (pCASL) hypercapnia technique. This is the first study to measure CVR abnormalities in MS.
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