In vivo cortical glutathione response to oral fumarate therapy in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis: A single-arm open-label phase IV trial using 7-Tesla (1)H MRS

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Glutathione in the context of multiple sclerosis, published as a clinical trial, phase iv.

This is an open-label, single-arm, single-center pilot study using 7-Tesla in vivo proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H MRS) to measure brain cortical glutathione concentration at baseline before and during the use of oral fumarates as a disease-modifying therapy for multiple sclerosis.

The primary endpoint of this research was the change in prefrontal cortex glutathione concentration relative to a therapy-naïve baseline after one year of oral fumarate therapy.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 8 volunteers were involved.

PubMed indexes the participants as young children.

Additional measurements of related metabolites glutamate, glutamine, myoinositol, total N-acetyl aspartate, and total choline were also acquired in voxels centered on the same regions.

Seven relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis patients (4 f / 3 m, age range 28-50 years, mean age 40 years) naïve to fumarate therapy were scanned at pre-therapy baseline and after 1, 3, 6 and 12 months of therapy.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a open-label and pilot study.

Nothing was hidden in this open-label Glutathione study: the volunteers and staff both knew the treatment.

It is described as a pilot, a small early test of whether a larger Glutathione study would be practical.

A group of 8 healthy volunteers (4 f / 4 m, age range 33-48 years, mean age 41 years) was also scanned at baseline and Month 6 to characterize 1H-MRS measurement reproducibility over a comparable time frame.

What Was Measured

This is an open-label, single-arm, single-center pilot study using 7-Tesla in vivo proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H MRS) to measure brain cortical glutathione concentration at baseline before and during the use of oral fumarates as a disease-modifying therapy for multiple sclerosis.

The primary endpoint of this research was the change in prefrontal cortex glutathione concentration relative to a therapy-naïve baseline after one year of oral fumarate therapy.

PubMed files the paper under topics including Choline, Fumarates, Glutamine, Glutathione, Multiple Sclerosis, Multiple Sclerosis, Relapsing-Remitting and Pilot Projects.

The authors tagged it with the keywords 7 Tesla, Magnetic resonance spectroscopy and Prefrontal cortex.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is an open-label and pilot study of Glutathione in 8 volunteers in people with multiple sclerosis.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Results are reported in around 4 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2023 (NeuroImage. Clinical), a journal based in Netherlands.

More context: the Glutathione compound page, Multiple sclerosis research.