OBJECTIVE: To investigate the differential diagnostic value of NMO-IgG for neuromyelitis optica (NMO) versus multiple sclerosis (MS) and to analyze its possible clinical features related to NMO-IgG. METHODS: Forty-one NMO patients and 44 MS patients in acute phase and 40 healthy controls were investigated. Serum NMO-IgG was tested by indirect immunofluorescence assay.
Abstract: Neuromyelitis optica (NMO), or Devic disease, has been distinguished from multiple sclerosis (MS) by the presence of optic neuritis that is usually bilateral, simultaneous, and often severe, myelopathic findings accompanied by longitudinally extensive spinal cord imaging abnormalities, no brain imaging abnormalities typical of MS, and often rapid progression to debility and even death. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic have identified an immunoglobulin marker of NMO (the NMO antibody) that binds selectively to the aquaphorin-4 water channel and may play a causative role
Neuromyelitis optica (NMO), characterised by longitudinally extensive transverse myelitis (LETM), was previously thought to be a variant of multiple sclerosis.
Neuromyelitis optica (NMO, Devic’s syndrorne.l is characterized by concurrence of optic neuritis and transverse myelitis, typically associated with a lesion in the spinal cord extending over three or more vertebral segments. It is an inflammatory, demyelinating central nervous system disorder, and although it is most commonly relapsing, it is distinct from multiple sclerosis in that it is more severe, tends to spare the brain, and is associated with a longitudinally extensive lesion on spinal cord MRI. Furthermore, NMO is associated with a highly specific serum autoantibody m,1rker, NMO-lgG, which targets the water channel aquaporin-4.