Using Optical Coherence Tomography to Capture Retinal Microvascular Changes Associated With Multiple Sclerosis

Recent studies have shown that people with multiple sclerosis (MS) who also have diseases related to vascular health such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and others, may end up more disabled than people with MS who don't have those diseases. This has led to a growing interest in the role of vascular diseases in MS since they may provide another avenue of MS treatment. Some also think that vascular disease may even be a cause of MS. The back of the eye, the retina, is well-suited to studying vascular diseases as blood vessels can be seen even on routine examination of the eye by eye doctors. These specialists are used to seeing changes in retinal blood vessels due to diseases known to affect the eyes such as glaucoma and diabetes. Sophisticated techniques for examining the retina allow for not only visualization of blood vessels, but the rate of blood flow through the blood vessels as well. These blood flow changes are thought to come before changes in what the blood vessels look like, and so may be able to detect problems even earlier than routine examination of the retina by eye doctors. Retinal blood flow has never been carefully studied in MS. Given that MS affects the retina due to the late effects of inflammation of the optic nerve, or optic neuritis, the investigators expect to see altered blood flow in the retinal blood vessels of people with MS compared to healthy control subjects. If so, the investigators can then use retinal blood flow as a way to measure therapies that target vascular diseases in the MS population and determine if those therapies can alter the course of disease.