Neurol Neuroimmunol Neuroinflamm: OCT to check the thickness of the retinal layer helps early recognition of the risk of cognitive impairment in patients with multiple sclerosis

For patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), cognitive impairment (CI) may be a prominent symptom of the disease, even in the early stages.

The retinal layer thickness (RLT) measured by optical coherence tomography (OCT) is considered to be a non-invasive, cost-effective and effective marker of multiple sclerosis (MS) neurodegeneration.

The study data comes from a baseline examination of an intervention study.

The figure above shows the exclusion, withdrawal, and final sample situation.

In this cross-sectional study, patients with at least signs of mild cognitive impairment were examined by OCT, the International MS Cognitive Assessment, and the Attention and Executive Function Test (Trail Making Test [TMT] A and B).

A total of 64 patients entered the study.

Scatter plot of the correlation between cognitive performance of pRNFL, mRNFL, GCIPL and TMT-B

The figure above depicts the raw scores of cognitive performance for each RLT extreme group.

In MS patients, at the lower stage of the disease, RLT is particularly related to cognitive flexibility, promoting OCT as a potential marker and advocating further extensive neuropsychological examinations.

In summary, RLT and BICAMS seem to be complementary methods in patients with mild to moderate clinical deficits, because SDMT and BVMT-R have no correlation with RLT when correcting for multiple tests.

neurology.