P.019 Motor evoked potentials as a new biomarker in multiple sclerosis

Abstract

Background: Motor evoked potentials (MEP’S) measure myelin/axonal integrity of the central nervous system. MEP’s reliability and correlation to conventional clinical measures in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients have yet to be demonstrated. Alemtuzumab is a high efficacy therapy used in patients with MS. Its longitudinal impact on electrophysiological measures has yet to be examined. Methods: This is a single center, observational study. 10 patients with MS who received their first cycle of alemtuzumab within less than 3 months were evaluated with both clinical and MEP’s measures at baseline and every 6 months thereafter for 36 months. MEP’s were repeated two weeks after every time point. We report our preliminary analyses. Results: Patient follow-up ranges from 6 to 36 months. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) between two consecutive time points were good with values of 0.774 for the biceps and 0.867 for the tibialis anterior with p values less than 0.0005 for both. The correlation for the biceps MEP’s to the 9 hole peg test (9HPT) was 0.51 with p less than 0.0005 and for the tibialis anterior MEP’s to the 6 minute walk test (6MWT) was -0.411 with p=0.01. Conclusions: Our preliminary analyses demonstrate that MEP results are reproducible and correlate with clinical measures.