RESEARCH ARTICLE
Supratentorial Multiple Sclerosis Lesions Affect the Blink Reflex Test
Efthimios H Mikropoulos*, 1, Afroditi A Papathanasiou 2, Georgios Hadjigeorgiou 1, Evangelia Tsironi 3, Alex Papadimitriou 1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2010Volume: 4
First Page: 92
Last Page: 99
Publisher ID: TONEUJ-4-92
DOI: 10.2174/1874205X01004010092
Article History:
Received Date: 15/3/2010Revision Received Date: 1/6/2010
Acceptance Date: 17/7/2010
Electronic publication date: 8/9/2010
Collection year: 2010
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Introduction
The Blink Reflex Test (BRT) is a neurophysiological examination used for evaluation of brainstem reflex circuits. MRI is the most precise modality for evaluation of MS lesion anatomy. Our study objective was to investigate how the functional results of the neurophysiological BRT relate to the anatomy of MS lesions in routine MRI studies.
Methods
65 MS patients underwent the BRT within 2 months of a brain MRI showing demyelinating lesions.
Results
The overall sensitivity of the BRT was 90.8%, while in patients with at least one brainstem lesion and no brainstem lesions it was 91.4% and 90%, respectively.
Discussion
The presence of brainstem lesions does not significantly affect BRT sensitivity. This points to the influence of supratentorial MS lesions on the BRT. Gender, age, disease duration, type of MS, acuteness of an MS event and whether MS diagnosis was recent or not were not variables affecting the results.
