Translational value of choroid plexus imaging for tracking neuroinflammation in mice and humans
It is demonstrated that ChP enlargement—reconstructed from MRI—is highly associated with acute disease activity, both in the studied mouse models and in humans, and could serve as a promising interspecies marker for translational and reverse-translational approaches.
Abstract
<jats:title>Significance</jats:title> <jats:p>Neuroinflammation is a hallmark of multiple sclerosis and is linked to neurodegeneration. This study provides pathophysiological insights into the cross-dependency between neuroinflammation and choroid plexus characteristics in both mice and humans. Our work relates an enlargement of choroid plexus volume to ongoing neuroinflammation and emerging clinical disability in two large cohorts of multiple sclerosis patients as well as in two mouse models, the cuprizone diet-related demyelination and the experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis. Choroid plexus characterization as measured by high-resolution MRI thus represents a reliable and translatable interspecies marker for the quantification of neuroinflammation and disease trajectories that is strongly associated with functional outcomes.</jats:p>