The Effect of Corticosteroid Medication on Quantitative MR Parameters of the Brain

American Journal of Neuroradiology

TABLE 1:

Patient characteristics

	Controls	CS−	CS+
Number of subjects	15	14	13
Age (y)	45 ± 10	49 ± 13	58 ± 16
Gender (M/F)	1/14	3/11	3/10
Disease duration (y)		11 ± 10	6 ± 7
Prednisone, daily oral dosage (mg)			9.2 ± 2.8
Prednisone, lifetime oral dosage (g)			4.4 ± 4.9

TABLE 2:

Parameter values and results of univariate analyses with age as a covariate

	Controls	CS−	CS+	P Value
CSF %	14.3 ± 1.4	15.0 ± 2.4	16.7 ± 2.1	.319
Lesion %	0.06 ± 0.17	0.18 ± 0.51	0.34 ± 0.41	.767
MTR PH	121 ± 7.8	114 ± 10.2	112 ± 8.9	.152
MTR mean	34.1 ± 0.48	33.8 ± 0.43	33.5 ± 0.60	.147
ADC PH	3.10 ± 0.19	2.99 ± 0.19	3.07 ± 0.46	.477
ADC mean	797 ± 20	795 ± 20	798 ± 22	.627
NAA/Cre	2.20 ± 0.19	2.08 ± 0.20	1.94 ± 0.16	.064
Cho/Cre	1.01 ± 0.14	0.87 ± 0.18	0.87 ± 0.18	.055

Note.—CS indicates corticosteroids; CSF %, cerebrospinal fluid volume as a fraction of intracranial volume; Lesion %, lesion volume as a fraction of brain parenchyma volume; MTR PH and MTR mean, magnetization transfer ratio histogram peak height (arbitrary unit) and mean (percent unit); ADC PH and ADC mean, apparent diffusion coefficient histogram peak height (arbitrary unit) and mean (10⁻⁶ s/mm²); NAA/Cre and Cho/Cre, ratio of N-acetylaspartate and choline to creatine.

TABLE 3:

Pearson correlation coefficients between imaging and clinical parameters

	Disease Duration		CS Duration		CS Dose (Daily)		CS Dose (Lifetime)
	Corr.	P Value	Corr.	P Value	Corr.	P Value	Corr.	P Value
CSF %	0.129	.522	0.087	.777	−0.269	.374	0.013	.966
Lesion %	0.024	.906	−0.303	.314	0.132	.668	−0.285	.345
MTR PH	−0.198	.322	0.136	.657	0.199	.515	0.201	.510
MTR mean	0.043	.831	0.135	.660	0.081	.793	0.171	.577
ADC PH	−0.015	.940	0.440	.133	0.508	.076	0.503	.080
ADC mean	0.170	.397	−0.138	.654	−0.099	.747	−0.183	.550
NAA/Cre	0.122	.571	0.408	.188	0.125	.699	0.405	.192
Cho/Cre	0.326	.119	0.511	.089	0.194	.547	0.493	.103

Note.—CS indicates corticosteroids; Corr., Pearson correlation coefficient; CSF %, cerebrospinal fluid volume as a fraction of intracranial volume; Lesion %, lesion volume as a fraction of brain parenchyma volume; MTR PH and MTR mean, magnetization transfer ratio histogram peak height (arbitrary unit) and mean (percent unit); ADC PH and ADC mean, apparent diffusion coefficient histogram peak height (arbitrary unit) and mean (10⁻⁶ s/mm²); NAA/Cre and Cho/Cre, ratio of N-acetylaspartate and choline to creatine.