Monitoring changes in MS with visual testing

Joshua Barton

Brain and Mind Centre, The University of Sydney, NSW

February 2017

specialisation: Neurobiology

focus area: Better treatments

funding type: Scholarship

project type: Investigator Led Research

Summary

The current methods available to clinicians and researchers to measure the progression of disease and disability in people with MS are relatively insensitive and must be measured over relatively long periods of time to detect changes. However, people with early MS often have changes to their brains which do not result in symptoms, so called ‘sub-clinical changes’ which can affect disability later in the disease. Clinical trials for medications that aim to slow or halt disability progression are also hampered by this lack of sensitive measures for progression.

Dr Barton, a clinician currently receiving advanced training in neurology, will undertake a postgraduate scholarship to develop a tablet based tool that will track sub-clinical changes in real-time.

The tests, which can be easily administered on a tablet device in the clinic or for the first time, in a person’s home, will measure aspects of the visual system – the eyes and the parts of the brain that process vision. The tablet based testing will be recorded over time and compared with more traditional MRI scanning measures of relapse activity and clinical measurements of disability and disturbance to the visual pathway.

Dr Barton will also determine whether these visual measurements also show improvement in people who improve clinically after commencing highly effective disease modifying therapy for their MS. It is expected this research will yield a novel tool for use in clinical trials and in the clinic to monitor disease progression and the effectiveness of therapies for MS in the real world setting.

publications

  • Barton JL, Garber JY, Klistorner AK, Barnett MH, The electrophysiological assessment of visual function in Multiple Sclerosis” Clin Neurophysiol Pract. 2019, 4:90-96

Updated; 11 June 2020

lead investigator

Dr Joshua Barton

supervisor

total funding

$67,000

start year

2017

duration

2 years

STATUS

Past project

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Monitoring changes in MS with visual testing