Lesions ?

[thebestthings]

If Ms Patients have lesions on the brain will they most likely have them on the spine ?
I have to go for another mri to see and I was wondering if most of You have lesions on the spine as well as brain ?
Thanks and have a great day

[chrishasms]

1323

[Absentee]

the lesion thing really bothers me. They can't show a one to one correlation between lesions and symptoms - which to me seems unbelievable. How can this be?

For me - I have a bunch on my spine and less in my noggin. Until my neuro can show what symptoms relate to which lesions, I choose not to get too hung up on the number or quality of them.

good luck to you.

[HarryZ]

If Ms Patients have lesions on the brain will they most likely have them on the spine ?
I have to go for another mri to see and I was wondering if most of You have lesions on the spine as well as brain ?
Thanks and have a great day

Don't get too hung up on lesions. They come and go, healthy people have them and there isn't correlation between lesions and symptoms. Even in the Tysabri trials they stated there wasn't a correlation between the two yet they hung their results on comparing the lesions before and after!! Go figure.

My wife (passed away in 2007) had only a couple of very old lesions on her brain. But during the autopsy, they discovered tons of them in her spine and that caused all her problems in the latter years. And they never took an MRI of her spine.

Harry

[DM]

I have some lesions on my brain but none on my spine.

[euphoniaa]

Don't get too hung up on lesions. They come and go, healthy people have them and there isn't correlation between lesions and symptoms.

Harry

I completely agree with Harry's comment above. I'll also add that the brain is very plastic, continually able to form new neural pathways around damage, while the limited space in the spine makes it less forgiving of lesions - and maybe harder to spot them.

Here's a link to one of my favorite sites - The Whole Brain Atlas. If you scroll down to the MS section you can take a "tour" of an MS brain. If you click on "Cine" you can see time-lapse MRIs, and watch lesions both come and go in only weeks and months. You can even choose the "slice" or section you want to view.

http://www.med.harvard.edu/AANLIB/home.html

And...they know that many lesions aren't easy to spot even though they're there. You get different results according to the equipment and the skill of the MRI film reader. In my case, my brain was so full of classic MS lesions that I got an "instant" dx after a single MRI (of brain & C-Spine) without contrast, and before I went to a single neuro. Later docs noted them in my brainstem, C-spine and optic nerve, but those weren't mentioned in the original report. I think I have a relatively mildish case of MS, maybe because I've had it so long I've managed to slowly adapt to it all. And my brain is loaded with lesions.

Harry, that's very interesting info about your wife's lesions. I was so sorry to hear of her death. It's too bad that they don't order as many MRIs of the spine as they do of the brain. As I'm still sloooowly progressing, I think I might request a spinal MRI at my next neuro visit and see what happens.

Good health and good thoughts to all!

[HarryZ]

Harry, that's very interesting info about your wife's lesions. I was so sorry to hear of her death. It's too bad that they don't order as many MRIs of the spine as they do of the brain. As I'm still sloooowly progressing, I think I might request a spinal MRI at my next neuro visit and see what happens.

Good health and good thoughts to all!

From what I have seen over the years, they seldom do MRI's of the spine. In Marg's case, she took part in a clinical trial back in the late 90's (another one of those miracle drugs that stopped and reversed MS in that poor mouse but did nothing for human MS!) and had an MRI every month for 11 months.

The couple of small lesions they initially saw were old and non-active and that did not change in the 11 months of the trial. But the disease slowly marched on after that and I can only assume that there was lesion activity in her spine during the last 10 years of her life. Yet, never was there an MRI taken of her spine.

Harry