Eye Test Peers Into Heat-Related Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms
A unique new tool has been helping researchers to understand the link between body temperature and the severity of symptoms brought about by multiple sclerosis. Researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Center makes use of a bodysuit riddled with tubes where water circulates to heat up or cool down a patient’s body temperature to study one aspect of MS that is called Uhthoff’s phenomenon.
The Uhthoff’s phenomenon was named after a German ophthalmologist who discovered in 1889 that people, after undergoing strenuous exercise or under hot weather, experience temporary vision problems. It has been found that MS patients display such symptoms along with fatigue and problems with coordination. These symptoms seem to worsen in patients with MS who are in the heat.
Researchers have long known about the Uhthoff’s phenomenon but found no way of being able to objectively measure its severity or how it is related to a person’s body temperature. The study of the researchers at UT Southwestern have been able to demonstrate that as the body temperature increases, so does the severity of an eye movement disorder called internuclear opthalmoparesis, or INO. This disorder is characterized by one eye not synchronized to work with the other. When a person with INO looks rapidly from one object to another, the other eye seems to move slower or with both of them not moving at the same speed.
The remodeled bodysuit was used with a pill-like thermometer that measures core body temperature when swallowed and an infrared camera to track eye movements. The study was conducted to include eight patients with MS who also experience INO, eight patients with MS but with no INO and eight healthy subjects. Warm water going though the tubes of the bodysuit can raise a subject’s body temperature by one half degree Celsius while cool water is able to bring it down to one half of a degree.
The study showed that increasing the a subjects body temperature also affects the relative motion of both eyes. Cooling the body, on the other hand, made the eyes synchronize better with each other. This test has been able to monitor INO that could provide researchers with a sensitive test that could determine an MS patient’s response to other heat related symptoms of the disease. The said test can also be used to try out the effectiveness of new therapies that specifically target a number of MS related symptoms.
Source: sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080320103240.htm
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