TY  - JOUR
A1  - Mayer, Christoph
A1  - Pfeilschifter, Waltraud
A1  - Lorenz, Matthias
A1  - Nedelmann, Max
A1  - Bechmann, Ingo Jürgen
A1  - Steinmetz, Helmuth
A1  - Ziemann, Ulf
T1  - The perfect crime? : CCSVI not leaving a trace in MS
T2  - Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry
N2  - Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic, inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system, believed to be triggered by an autoimmune reaction to myelin. Recently, a fundamentally different pathomechanism termed ‘chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency’ (CCSVI) was proposed, provoking significant attention in the media and scientific community.
Methods: Twenty MS patients (mean age 42.2±13.3 years; median Extended Disability Status Scale 3.0, range 0–6.5) were compared with 20 healthy controls. Extra- and intracranial venous flow direction was assessed by colour-coded duplex sonography, and extracranial venous cross-sectional area (VCSA) of the internal jugular and vertebral veins (IJV/VV) was measured in B-mode to assess the five previously proposed CCSVI criteria. IJV-VCSA≤0.3 cm2 indicated ‘stenosis,’ and IJV-VCSA decrease from supine to upright position ‘reverted postural control.’ The sonographer, data analyser and statistician were blinded to the patient/control status of the participants.
Results: No participant showed retrograde flow of cervical or intracranial veins. IJV-VCSA≤0.3 cm2 was found in 13 MS patients versus 16 controls (p=0.48). A decrease in IJV-VCSA from supine to upright position was observed in all participants, but this denotes a physiological finding. No MS patient and one control had undetectable IJV flow despite deep inspiration (p=0.49). Only one healthy control and no MS patients fulfilled at least two criteria for CCSVI.
Conclusions: This triple-blinded extra- and transcranial duplex sonographic assessment of cervical and cerebral veins does not provide supportive evidence for the presence of CCSVI in MS patients. The findings cast serious doubt on the concept of CCSVI in MS.
Y1  - 2011
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/22407
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30-100441
SN  - 1468-330X
SN  - 0022-3050
N1  - This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non commercial and is otherwise in compliance with the license. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/legalcode.
VL  - 82
IS  - 4
SP  - 436
EP  - 440
PB  - BMJ Publishing Group
CY  - London
ER  -