Marieke van Rosmalen

Chapter 7 116 RESULTS Patients and clinical data We included 30 patients: 23 with CIDP and 7 with MMN. Patient characteristics are summarized in Table 7.2 . Patients with MMN were younger than patients with CIDP and disease controls ( p < 0.001). Other characteristics did not differ significantly. Table 7.2 Patient characteristics Parameter CIDP MMN p Number of subjects 23 7 - Age, years (SD) 64.7 (6.3) 45.5 (4.9) < 0.001 Male (%) 20 (87%) 6 (86%) - Disease duration, months (SD) 2.4 (3.0) 1.4 (1.7) 0.45 MRI interval, months (SD) 11.6 (4.8) 14.6 (6.3) 0.18 Duration since last maintenance treatment, days (SD) 16.6 (9.7) 14.9 (16.4) 0.76 Treatment details Received High Dose Therapy 23 (100%) 7 (100%) Positive treatment response (%) 16 (70%) 7 (100%) Requires maintenance treatment (%) 14 (61%) 7 (100%) Immunoglobulins 12 7 Dexamethasone 2 0 Disease duration = time in months between diagnosis and research MRI 1; MRI interval = time in months between research MRI 1 and research MRI 2; Duration since last maintenance treatment = time between last treatment and research MRI 2. Age, disease duration, MRI interval and duration since last treatment are mean (SD). Abbreviations: CIDP = chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy; MMN = multifocal motor neuropathy; p = p value; SD = standard deviation. Feasibility of data processing Automated processing identified 87.2% of all nerve roots (88%, 95% and 78% for C5, C6 and C7 respectively). With additional manual adjustments a total of 95% of all C5 nerve roots, 100% of C6 nerve roots and 95% of C7 could be identified. Quantitative MRI parameters Mean differences of the quantitative MRI parameters between t 0 and t 1 can be found in Table 7.3 . MD, AD and RD decreased and fat fraction increased over time in patients with CIDP ( p = 0.012, 0.018, 0.015, and 0.045 respectively), but not in patients with MMN. Figure 7.2 shows the changes of the quantitative MRI parameters between t 0 and t 1 for each patient.