MRI results in MS not significantly affected by gender

Women get MS more often than men, and this gap in MS risk seems to be widening according to recent studies. Once someone has MS, does their gender also affect how their disease evolves? A few studies have examined whether MRI findings are different in men with MS compared with women, and a review of these studies concludes that in general, gender does not greatly affect MRI characteristics such as lesion load and atrophy.

This review included ten studies that had analyzed MRI findings such as lesion number, lesion volume, atrophy and atrophy progression. Many of the studies were smaller, single-center investigations while others analyzed data from multi-center studies or large databases such as the Sylvia Lawry Center clinical trials database. Some of the single-center studies included in the review did find that women had more Gd-enhancing lesions than men or that men had more T1 hypointense lesions. However, larger studies did not see these differences. Another study found that men with MS had lower gray matter volumes than women, but this has not yet been confirmed by separate investigations. The reviewers conclude that while gender differences in MRI may still exist, so far no major distinctions have been discovered and confirmed. They also note that differences may exist in spinal MRIs as well as in PPMS (for which the gender gap in risk is much less than in RRMS), since these areas have not been explored as thoroughly as brain MRIs for people with RRMS.