THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, MARYLAND, USA. A recent study suggests that the progression of multiple sclerosis may actually be tracked using eye scans. The study also showed that patients with active and early multiple sclerosis are more prone to faster retinal thinning as compared to those who have had the disease for more than five years.

This study was made possible using some in-office eye scans which are usually being used for assessing the thinning of the retina. For this particular study, the eye scans were used to see how fast the progression of multiple sclerosis is occurring in a patient’s body.

164 multiple sclerosis patients had to undergo eye scans every 6 months for about 21 months for the study. During the beginning of the study, the patients also had MRI brain scans. The patients who did not have any relapse were less prone to retinal thinning as compared to those who had multiple sclerosis relapses wherein their retinal thinning was 42 percent faster.

Also, researchers found that patients with gadolinium-enhancing lesions had about 54 percent faster retinal thinning than those with no lesions on their MRI brain scans.

Dr. Peter Calabresi from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is the head of the study. He said that testing retinal thinning in the eyes may help evaluate the actual effectivity of new therapies being developed to slow down the progression of multiple sclerosis. Even some other experts agree with Dr. Peter Calabresi’s research findings.

More studies will be done to see if eye scans can be officially used as an effective and reliable marker in progressive multiple sclerosis patients.