Background and purpose: Blood-brain barrier disruption during the earliest phases of lesion formation in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients is commonly ascribed to perivenular inflammatory activity and is usually accompanied by increased diffusivity. Reduced diffusivity has also been shown in active lesions, albeit less frequently. This study aimed to characterize the development and natural history of contrast-enhanced lesions by weekly following five relapsing remitting (RR) MS patients.
Materials and methods: Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), perfusion imaging, FLAIR and contrast-enhanced 3D T1-weighted MR, were weekly performed on five untreated patients recently diagnosed with RR MS.
Results: All five patients showed significant increases of the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) in the lesions compared to the first time point. One of the five patients presented 98 active lesions on ADC maps among which 36 had a volume larger than 10 mm(3). In two of these lesions, a 1 week transient decrease in ADC was detected at the time of the first gadolinium enhancement. Also, the perfusion analysis showed a concomitant increase in the relative cerebral blood volume.
Conclusions: The infrequency detection of such ADC decrease in a new lesion is probably due to its very short duration. This observation may be consistent with a hyper-acute inflammatory stage concomitant with an increased reactional perfusion.
Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00861172.
Keywords: Apparent diffusion coefficient; diffusion tensor imaging; lesions; multiple sclerosis; perfusion; relative cerebral blood volume.