Optical Coherence Tomography and Corpus Callosum Index in Cognitive Assessment of Multiple Sclerosis Patients

Background: Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a neurodegenerative disease of central nervous system. Different approaches have been developed to study MS progression and cognitive dysfunction as the major symptom of the disease. The current study compared Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) and Corpus Callosum Index (CCI) for the early evaluation of cognitive dysfunction in MS patients. Objectives: The aim of this study is to compare OCT with CCI in early evaluation of cognitive dysfunction in MS patients. Materials & Methods: In this study, a total number of 30 patients with relapsing-remitting MS referring to outpatient clinic of Shafa Hospital (Kerman, Iran) were selected in 2016. CCI was assessed by MRI. The cognitive function of MS patients was evaluated by brief international cognitive assessment for MS and retinal nerve fiber layer thickness was measured by OCT. The obtained data were analyzed using SPSS, and the Chi-square test was used to compare the categorical variables. Results: In this study on MS patients of both sexes and different ages, there was no significant correlation between cognitive status and CCI (P=0.804). Among the group with impaired cognition, 81.8% of patients had abnormal OCT, and only 2 patients had normal OCT. Furthermore, our data showed a significant correlation between OCT and cognition (P=0.026). Conclusion: According to this study, OCT is as useful method in the evaluation of axonal loss and predicting cognitive dysfunction in MS patients, compared to CCI or other measures.