RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 The MRI central vein marker; differentiating PPMS from RRMS and ischemic SVD JF Neurology - Neuroimmunology Neuroinflammation JO Neurol Neuroimmunol Neuroinflamm FD Lippincott Williams & Wilkins SP e496 DO 10.1212/NXI.0000000000000496 VO 5 IS 6 A1 Amal P.R. Samaraweera A1 Yasser Falah A1 Alain Pitiot A1 Robert A. Dineen A1 Paul S. Morgan A1 Nikos Evangelou YR 2018 UL http://nn.neurology.org/content/5/6/e496.abstract AB Objective To determine whether the assessment of brain white matter lesion (WML) central veins differentiate patients with primary progressive MS (PPMS) from relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) and ischemic small vessel disease (SVD) using 3T MRI.Methods In this cross-sectional study, 71 patients with PPMS, RRMS, and SVD were imaged using a T2*-weighted sequence. Two blinded raters identified the total number of WMLs, proportion of WMLs in periventricular, deep white matter (DWM) and juxtacortical regions, and proportion of WMLs with central veins in all patient groups. The proportions were compared between disease groups, including effect sizes. MS or SVD was categorized using a threshold of ≥40% WMLs with central veins as indicative of MS. Interrater and intrarater reproducibility was calculated.Results The mean proportion of WMLs with central veins was 68.4% in PPMS, 74.3% in RRMS, and 4.7% in SVD. The difference in proportions between PPMS and SVD groups was significant (p < 0.0005; effect size: 3.8) but not significant between MS subtypes (p = 0.3; effect size: 0.29). Distribution of WMLs was similar across both MS groups, but despite SVD patients having more DWM lesions than PPMS patients, proportions of WMLs with central veins remained low (2.75% in SVD; 62.5% in PPMS). Interrater and intrarater reproducibility comparing proportions of WMLs with central veins across all patients was 0.86 and 0.90, respectively. Level of agreement between the proportion of WML central veins and established diagnosis was 0.84 and 0.82 for each rater.Conclusions WML central veins could be used to differentiate PPMS from SVD but not between MS subtypes.DWM=deep white matter; ICC=intraclass correlation coefficient; IQR=interquartile range; JC=juxtacortical; PPMS=primary progressive MS; PV=periventricular; RRMS=relapsing-remitting MS; SVD=small vessel disease; WML=white matter lesion