Longitudinal lesion study in MS.
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A longitudinal study of the evolution of lesions in early Multiple Sclerosis
IRAS ID
255260
Contact name
Emma Tallantyre
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cardiff University
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 30 days
Research summary
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic disease of the central nervous system, commonly affecting young adults. The effect MS has on individuals varies significantly and previous studies have suggested variations in the histological appearance of MS white matter lesions. This poses the question, is MS more than one disease? Determining the answer to this is key to aiding not only our understanding of MS, but also in developing personalised medicine and further treatments. This project aims to explore the added value that novel structural imaging markers can provide in evaluating lesion evolution in early MS. We will invite 20 participants with early, untreated MS to undergo a detailed clinical assessment and monthly multimodal MRI brain scans for 6 months. Participants will be recruited via the regional South Wales MS clinic and will be scanned in the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC). From these data we aim to determine whether novel MR imaging can detect characteristic signatures of lesion evolution, as well as investigate whether imaging characteristics of lesion evolution relate to a clinical marker of repair. Moreover, the identification of pathologically-specific markers that could be measured on a lesion-by-lesion basis would facilitate the testing of therapeutic strategies for repair during early clinical trials.
REC name
Wales REC 2
REC reference
19/WA/0213
Date of REC Opinion
19 Sep 2019
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion