The Relationship Between Brain MR Spectroscopy and Disability in Multiple Sclerosis: 20-Year Data from the U.S. Glatiramer Acetate Extension Study

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Glatiramer Acetate in the context of multiple sclerosis.

Conventional MRI techniques do not necessarily provide information about multiple sclerosis (MS) disease pathology or progression.

This study explores potential correlations between MRI measures of disease and disability progression as measured by the Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS), Functional Systems (FS), and ambulation index scores in a unique cohort of MS patients treated with glatiramer acetate that has been closely monitored for over 20 years.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as middle-aged adults, both men and women.

This was a multicenter, open-label, cross-sectional MRI substudy among participants in the GA-9004 open-label extension of the 36-month, double-blind GA-9001 study, timed to coincide with the prospectively planned 20-year clinical exam.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind, open-label and multicenter study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Glatiramer Acetate and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Blinding on both sides kept the participants and researchers unaware of who received Glatiramer Acetate.

Nothing was hidden in this open-label Glatiramer Acetate study: the participants and staff both knew the treatment.

More than one site took part, so the participants came from several places.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Cross-Sectional Studies, Disability Evaluation, Disease Progression, Glatiramer Acetate, Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Multiple Sclerosis and Neuroprotective Agents.

Author keywords: MRI, disability correlates and extension study.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and open-label study of Glatiramer Acetate in people with multiple sclerosis.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 5 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2017 (Journal of neuroimaging : official journal of the American Society of Neuroimaging), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Glatiramer Acetate compound page, Multiple sclerosis research.