Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy in Experimental Allergic Encephalomyelitis

Abstract

Experimental allergic (autoimmune) encephalomyelitis (EAE) is widely regarded as the animal model of multiple sclerosis (MS). The main features shared by both conditions are female sex in EAE or female preponderance in MS, young adults, genetic susceptibility with major histocompatibility complex (MHC) association or non-MHC-associated, isolated attacks of the central nervous system (CNS), and histologically, evidence of inflammation, lymphocytic infiltrates, macrophage infiltration and microglia activation, demyelination, and apoptosis in the CNS. However, the pathogenic role of autoreactive T-cells which is crucial in EAE has not been convincingly demonstrated in MS patients, and the role of a restricted use of the T-cell receptor repertoire, a constant finding in EAE, is at best inconstant in MS. Moreover, the acute form of EAE more resembles perivenous encephalomyelitis (i.e., acute disseminated encephalomyelitis or postinfectious encephalomyelitis or postvaccinal myelitis). The latter condition was first recognized in the late nineteenth century in a few subjects who had received Pasteur’s rabies virus vaccine and developed thereafter a paralytic syndrome of the CNS due to an autoimmune hypersensitivity reaction [1]. This observation led in the first half of the twentieth century to the idea that a neurological autoimmune disease could be caused after injection of CNS material, brain or spinal cord, into animals [2].