Aim of the study was to evaluate the vascularisation of the Optic Nerve (ONr) by means of color Doppler ultrasonography in MS patients with and without previous ONe. Furthermore, the possibility to measure the ONr thickness by ultrasound sonography was assessed. We compared Optic Nerve anatomical and vascular features of MS patients with those of age- and gender-matched Healthy Controls (HC). With a high-resolution echo-color duplex ultrasound equipment we studied the ONr and its vascularisation [i.e. Ophthalmic Artery (OA), Central Retinal Artery (CRA), Central Bortezomib in vivo Retinal Vein (CRV)] in 29 Relapsing–Remitting (RR) clinically definite MS patients

[14] and 21 age- and gender-matched HC, volunteers. Table 1 shows the characteristics of the subjects studied. Seventeen MS patients have

had an ONe at least one year before examination (5 have had a right ONe, 7 a left ONe and five a bilateral ONe) while 12 MS patients have not suffered from ONe. All MS patients underwent a Visual Evoked Potentials Examination to confirm the ONe diagnosis. By means of a Toshiba Aplio XG, equipped with Gefitinib datasheet a linear probe (PLT-1204AX: 7.2-14 MHz), we insonated the ONe (Fig. 1) and measured the diameter of ONr, with and without the meningeal sheaths, at two distances, the first at 3 mm from the retinal plane (Fig. S1, online supplementary file) and the second at an unfixed point where the nerve structures were best recognised (maximum diameter), through the usual suprabulbar approach (Fig. 2). We detected the OA (Fig. 3) and CRA (Fig. S2, online supplementary file) flow velocities [Peak Systolic Velocity (PSV), End Diastolic Velocity (EDV), mean Velocity (mV)], and the CRV flow velocities [(Maximum Velocity (MV), Minimum Velocity (MinV), mean Velocity (mV)] and calculated, for each blood vessel, the Pulsatility Index GPX6 (PI) and the Resistive Index (RI) (Fig. 4). Overall, we examined and compared 42 eyes of HC with 36 unaffected and 22 affected eyes of RR MS patients. The study was approved by the local Ethics Committee. Written informed consent was obtained from all patients and HC. The data were analysed by SPSS 17.0. Demographic

data were compared by independent samples t-test and chi square test, as appropriate. Data are reported as mean with standard deviation (SD) and as median and range inter-quartile (RIQ), when appropriate. Comparisons of the other variables were performed with the analysis of variance (ANOVA) complemented with the pairwise comparison vs. HC according to Dunnett. Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05. All the results are shown in Table 2. For the OA and the CRA we found no difference for all variables. For the CRV no detectable variation in velocities was found, while there was a significant difference in PI, that is greater in MS patients’ eyes not affected by ONe vs. both HC and MS patients’ eyes affected by ONe.