Genetics

This post covers Okuda and colleagues' 2009 Brain study of HLA-DRB1*1501 carrier status against four domains of MS severity in 505 patients at UCSF. It follows the measurement setup and blinding, the sex ratio and age-of-onset differences visible before imaging, the reduced NAA concentration in normal-appearing white matter found by multi-voxel spectroscopy, the 1,127 mm3 greater adjusted T2-lesion volume with its quartile pattern and the ceiling the authors propose for it, the 0.9% reduction in normalized brain parenchymal volume, the PASAT-3 result and the checks around it, and the mechanistic cascade the authors build from myelin basic protein peptide binding.