Evaluation of Correlations between Cerebral MRI Volumes, Retinal Thickness, Cognitive Involvement and Clinical Features in Parenchymal Neuro-Behçet Patients (P7.020)

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to reveal whether there is a difference between cognitive performance, visual conduction, retinal thickness and various cerebral volumes of parenchymal neuro-Behcet patients (PNB) and control groups; and to reveal whether there is a correlation between these parameters in the PNB group BACKGROUND: Neuro-Behcet’s disease(NBD) may be parenchymal or non-parenchymaI. Neurological and cognitive disability should be expected in parenchymal form which has a worse prognosis. NBD patients usually show lesions and atrophy in distinct brain regions which are brain stem (mainly mesencephalon and upper pons), diencephalon and basal ganglia. DESIGN/METHODS: Neurological examination, Addenbrooke cognitive examination (ACE-R) and various neuropsychological batteries. VEP, optical coherence tomography (OCT) and brain MRI were performed on neuro-Behcet9s patients, Behcet9s patients without neurological involvement, romatoid artritis patients and compared to healthy controls. Cerebral volumes were obtained by analysis of certain MRI sequences with FreeSurfer 4.05 software. RESULTS: 35 females and 33 males were evaluated. ACE-R score was significantly lower in PNB group in which memory was the most affected domain. VEP-pl00 amplitude and latency values showed strong positive and negative correlation with hemispheric white-matter-volume respectively. Retinal nerve fiber layer thickness was significantly thinner in PNB group. Brainstem, cerebellum, hipocampus and thalamus MRI volumes were smaller in PNB group even though they were not statistically significant. However a correlation between cognitive performance and MRI or OCT result could not be showed. CONCLUSIONS; Cognitive performance of PNB group was worse than the other groups in spite of mild disability scores; mainly memory processes were affected; VEP latency and amplitude values were strongly correlated with hemispheric white matter volume loss. Despite mild disability in PNB group, brainstem and diencephalon atrophy was detected. However, probably due to low number of patients there was no correlation between cognitive findings and MRI, VEP and OCT parameters. Disclosure: Dr. Gunduz has nothing to disclose. Dr. Kurtuncu has nothing to disclose. Dr. Matur has nothing to disclose. Dr. Topcular has nothing to disclose. Dr. Bilgic has nothing to disclose. Dr. Limon has nothing to disclose. Dr. Tanyildiz has nothing to disclose. Dr. Izgi has nothing to disclose. Dr. Erdogan has nothing to disclose. Dr. Oge has nothing to disclose. Dr. Gurvit has received personal compensation for activities with Novartis, Pfizer Inc., Lundbeck Research USA, Inc., and Janssen-Cilag as a consultant, advisory board member, and/or speaker. Dr. Demir has nothing to disclose.