Value of MRS in the Evaluation of Deep Grey Matter in Multiple Sclerosis

Background/Objective: In this study, our purpose was to evaluate the thalamic magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopic changes in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. Patients and Methods: Forty-three relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) patients and 23 control subjects were included in this study. Routine brain MR and MR spectroscopy (MRS) using single voxel technique were carried out in all the patients and the controls. The N-Acetylaspartate (NAA), choline (Cho) and creatine (Cr) peaks were calculated. The thalamic relative metabolite ratios of the RRMS patients were compared to those of the control subjects by using the statistical measures (Mann-Whitney U test). The level of statistical significance was set at 0.05. Results: The thalamic NAA/Cr and NAA/Cho ratios were lower while the thalamic Cho/Cr ratio was higher in the MS patients than those of the control subjects. But these differences in the spectroscopic relative metabolite ratios were not statistically significant between the groups (p=0.34, p=0.22 and p=0.1, respectively). Conclusion: The spectroscopic relative metabolite ratios were of limited value in determining the presence of metabolic changes in the deep grey matter of MS patients. New studies about the presence of the deep grey matter damage in MS patients are necessary.