info@myelopathy.org

Research Summary on MRI Methods for Predicting Functional Recovery from Surgery in Patients with Cervical Myelopathy.
Rao A et al., Diffusion Tensor Imaging in a Large Longitudinal Series of Patients With Cervical Spondylotic Myelopathy Correlated With Long-Term Functional Outcome. Neurosurgery. Epub ahead of print Feb 23, 2018
Reason for the study
Currently, the assessment of the impact of cervical myelopathy is based largely on patient reported symptoms and commonly quantified using an assessment scale called the mJOA. Patient reported symptoms are very important to take into account when discussing disease severity and function, but imaging measures which explain symptoms are also helpful. Currently there has been limited success in developing imaging measures which explain symptoms and, perhaps more importantly, predict future symptoms and potential recovery following surgery. This last part will be especially important for patients and surgeons determining who will benefit from surgery. 

This study examined a different magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique than normal, called diffusion tensor imaging. This technique quantifies how water naturally flows (diffuses). The specific measure they chose (fractional anisotropy) measures the degree to which water flows in a single direction on a scale of 0 to 1 with values closer to 1 indicating diffusion more strongly in 1 direction. In axons of the spinal cord, for example, it would be expected that water would flow consistently along the path of axons rather than perpendicular to the axons. If a group had a worse score, however, it might indicate that they had damage to the neurons allowing water to move more freely. So, the purpose of this study to use fractional anisotropy as a measure of integrity of neurons in the spinal cord and see if this correlated with function pre-surgically and change in function following surgery.

Methods
​This study enrolled patients who were diagnosed with cervical myelopathy over a 5 year period (age range 33 – 81, 18 male, 26 female) and followed these patients for 2 years following surgery. They took their MRI scans and determined mJOA score pre-operatively. For this study they focused their imaging analysis at the spinal level with the greatest compression of the spinal cord. For this analysis they included the whole cord except for the border around the cord because the data they could gain from this area might be incorrect due to the surrounding cerebrospinal fluid. They then compared the MRI scans (fractional anisotropy) and mJOA pre-operatively, and 6-, 12-, and 24-months after surgery. They also compared fractional anisotropy values to those from a group of healthy control participants. 

Results
As expected fractional anisotropy (the MRI measure of neuron integrity) was lower in patients with cervical myelopathy than controls.  It was also associated with the severity of myelopathy before surgery, as assessed by the mJOA (a measure of patient function). 
Also, fractional anisotropy inversely predicted change in mJOA score at 12 months, but was less strongly predictive of change in mJOA at 6 and 24 months. Baseline mJOA also was inversely predictive of change in mJOA at 12 months. This means that in this study, those participants with lower fractional anisotropy (neural integrity) or mJOA (function) scores pre-operatively improved the most following surgery.

Why is this important?
At present, we are unable to predict accurately the response to surgery, and therefore markers which help this will be useful for doctors and patients.  Whilst fractional anisotropy, has been investigated before previous studies using this technique were less successful in drawing a relationship with function. This may be due to improving the methods of collecting and analyzing the MRI data. 
The identified relationship between baseline mJOA and change in mJOA with surgery are therefore promising, but require further research to understand the meaning for patients; for example it is recognized that patients with greater disability typically do improve more as measured by the mJOA, but that does not mean that they achieve a better functional outcome.The mJOA is not a linear scale, where each point gain is equally as important as the next.  
We look forward to watching our understanding of Fractional Anisotropy improve and if it can be of benefit to doctors and patients.

​

​Frank’s Background Story 
​My whole life was driven by sport, mainly encouraged by my Granddad, and I played both football and Ice-hockey at an early age, the latter for a living. A severe knee injury forced me to hang my boots up but I continued being involved in sport only this time I took on the role of a goalkeeping coach in football, working with all age groups in both Milton Keynes and Bedford. An innocuous dive for a ball during a coaching session on the 27th September 2008 was to change my life drastically. I landed awkwardly on my arm and the elbow dug into my lower abdomen. A few hours later I was rushed into A&E and despite breaking bones and tearing ligaments during my career this was at a level I had never truly experienced before.

Roughly a year and half later I was referred to Addenbrookes hospital pain management team, and they diagnosed I had torn a stomach muscle, for the second time in my life, but had also damaged nerve endings and I was now suffering from Chronic Pain Syndrome and due to the damage done to my nerve endings, I would probably suffer from that for the rest of my life. To go from being so physically active to not being able to move without causing any pain was very hard to accept and then having to endure things such as having to be pushed around in a wheelchair where I had become so weak was tough and mentally I have constantly struggled to come to terms with it. Thankfully my partner Lucy has helped me to learn to deal with these emotions and in 2010 she encouraged me to enrol on an Access Course at Bedford College with a view to going to University and begin training as a Primary School Teacher. For someone who had left school with no qualifications to speak of, and to go to college was really scary but I enjoyed my time there, and I even wrote an article for the college paper about being a mature student struggling with a disability. I passed the course with merits and distinctions and gained a triple distinction for my final dissertation. I was speechless at how well things had gone and I was even more amazed when the University of Bedfordshire accepted me onto their Early Years Education, 3 year BA Hons degree. Whilst at Uni I knew the typical student nightlife was never going to be an option however I wanted to get involved as much as I could and so I became a Course Rep, a PAL leader during my 2nd and 3rd years, which involved helping first year students negotiate their first two terms on campus, and I also volunteered as a Student Ambassador, which involved helping out on Open Days showing prospective students around the campus and giving talks both on campus and in local colleges and schools about my experiences of being a student as well. This all helped me to gain confidence in myself and I found myself being asked to become a mentor to disabled students who were finding it difficult to adjust to university life. As I had done at college, I also found myself writing an article for the university magazine about how I’d gone from playing hockey to being a student wanting to work with children. My health continued to make things difficult but the university were superb and with an added year I eventually graduated in the July of 2015. Despite the issues I had endured, I enrolled onto the PGCE course to gain my teachers qualification. My health unfortunately took a turn for the worse, and I began to have constant tingling in my left arm and I had started to pass out with an alarming frequency.

Eventually I had to accept things were not getting better and I withdrew from the course on the 17th November which was one of the lowest points in my life. In January 2016 I applied for a job at the university working with the Dean of Student Experience and was offered the job on a 6 month contract. The role meant talking to students and finding out what issues they had experienced as well as contacting other universities to see what things they were initiating to get students involved more. During my time in this role I was instrumental in the starting of a student society called PAMMS, which was for parents and mature students, a student group I felt were regularly missed during student life and events. I was still passing out regularly and in late May 2016 that problem eventually caught up with me. I was in the garden playing with my dogs when I passed out, and upon coming round I was surrounded by broken wood and a concerned dog licking my face, it became clear I had gone through a small garden table and had badly bruised my left arm. A trip to A&E showed I hadn’t broken any bones but my arm was still extremely sore and had swollen quite alarmingly. The arm continued to swell and a few days later the whole forearm was black with bruising and was so painful I couldn’t bear anything touching my arm, leading to another trip up to A&E. A succession of specialists and nurses took it in turns to look at my arm and I was eventually taken to a ward before having surgery to repair the Compartment Syndrome which I was now suffering from. A CT and an MRI scan back in February of 2016 had already shown I had issues with 5 discs in my neck and that these were pressing on my spinal cord. In the August 2016 after seeing the neurology department at Cambridge hospital I had an ACDF to repair my C4/5 discs, however the surgeon stated I would need further surgery to repair the other levels. Another knock to my left hand caused my arm to swell again, and another trip to A&E led to me being rushed to surgery in late November 2016 to repair a second Compartment Syndrome, this time on the inner half of my left arm. I have been left with two 7* inch long scars on my left arm, and I was still continuing to pass out on a regular basis, and a further MRI scan in March of 2017 showed the discs in the neck had got worse and I needed major surgery to repair things. Lucy and I got married in late July and enjoyed a superb Honeymoon in Wales later on in September. My surgery was scheduled for 11th December and unfortunately was postponed three times, however, I reported to Addenbrookes on the 24th January 2018 for surgery the day after.

Post surgery:
I woke up and to be honest for the first 36 hours I felt pretty good, I think the copious amounts of Ketamine and morphine being pumped into my body may have had something to do with it. Lucy came to visit the day after surgery and couldn’t believe how coherent I was and in how little pain I appeared to be, this would definitely not be the case the day after, once I had been transferred to a Neuro ward and the Ketamine had worn off. I felt like I had been hit by a train and any movement sent fresh waves down my neck and back, and I couldn’t believe how uncomfortable the neck brace was either, even a morphine pump struggled to keep up with the need for pain relief as my body tried to cope with what had just happened. Over the next two weeks I gradually recovered and was allowed home, with the knowledge I had to keep the brace on for 24 hours a day and I would be seen in around 3 months time. The recovery process at home was hampered by an issue with sciatica which prevented me from laying in a reclined position in my bed forcing me to spend the first three months after the surgery sleeping on my sofa. This was really difficult to cope with but Lucy kept me going and I made sure the sympathy mode was kept up with wine gums and jelly babies being to the fore of my food intake. Lucy was able to take me out for a coffee on the odd occasion and my pain levels slowly reduced although even now 6 months down the line I am still having issues with the pain in the surgery site as the muscles begin to knit back together. My Chronic Pain has obviously not helped and has at times left me reaching for the oramorph as the pain relief I am already on had not controlled things. I have good and bad days and occasionally I have a very bad day which leaves me barely able to move. On a plus side I am no longer passing out 3-4 times a day, which when you think about it, I have been passing out for nearly 18 months, so at a best guess, I’ve zonked out over a 1,000 times.
I am now well on the road to recovery and despite still having issues with my shoulders and trying to get used to having a limited range of movement in my neck, having the surgery was worth it and indeed was necessary. My surgery was for prevention rather than cure and I know that whilst I wont ever score the winning goal in a Stanley Cup Final, I’m now looking forward to the future with confidence and this role is the perfect opportunity for me to continue with my recovery and make the most of the superb work done by my surgeon Dr Mark Kotter. It was Mark that explained myelopathy to me before I had my surgery and told me about the Facebook support group which I subsequently joined and that has been such a great support to myself and my wife. It has also helped me understand my condition more with the information available and accounts from others who suffer this tough condition.  When the group got the great news it was becoming a charity I really felt I wanted to be involved and to help spread he awareness of this condition and to raise funds. After speaking to the team I have been given the great opportunity to become the charity Ambassador for Myelopathy.org and hope that I can help to spread the word and begin to help people to understand the condition and thus give support to both sufferers and their loved ones. 
​

Reason for the Study
Walking impairments are a common feature of cervical myelopathy and can lead to falls.  In elderly individuals such falls, even if minor, can lead to injuries, such as broken bones.  Broken bones (‘fractures’) are more common as we get older, as aging affects bone strength, including conditions such as osteoporosis.  Such fractures generally occur in stereotyped locations such as the wrist, shoulder, hip, and low back and therefore termed ‘fragility fractures’. These secondary injuries are associated with a significant impact on life, including in some cases death.  In 2015, a group from the USA showed that 18% of patients with a hip fracture had undiagnosed myelopathy [1].  However the overall rate of fragility fractures (a fall related injury also associated with fragile bones) amongst elderly individuals with cervical myelopathy has not yet been investigated [2]

What did they find?
There were some differences in the characteristics of the study groups:

1. The cervical myelopathy surgical group was more likely to be male and younger, than the non-operative cervical myelopathy group. 
2. Both cervical myelopathy groups tended to have higher rates of additional diseases than controls
3. The non-operative cervical myelopathy had higher rates of osteoporosis, dementia and cerebrovascular disease than the surgical cervical myelopathy group.

At 12 months follow up, both non-operative and surgical cervical myelopathy groups were more likely to sustain fragility fractures than controls. The odds ratios were 1.59 and 1.48 respectively (odds ratios indicate relative odds of a diagnosis or injury with a value closer to 1 indicating no difference). Further, the odds of fracture were higher in both groups than controls at 36 months as well, however, at 36 months the surgical group was lower than the non-operative group.

​​References
[1] Radcliff et al (2015). High Incidence of Undiagnosed Cervical Myelopathy in Patients with Hip Fracture Compared to Controls. Journal of Orthopaedic Trauma. http://doi.org/10.1097/BOT.0000000000000485
[2] Horowitz JA, et al (2018). Fragility Fracture Risk in Elderly Patients with Cervical Myelopathy. Spine.
(3) Can Cervical Myelopathy cause hip fractures 
​

​Humans require many different repair and renewal strategies. At the earliest point in life, we need these pathways to grow and develop but in later life, we use these pathways to recover from disease and injury. For this, our bodies activate a unique type of cell known as a stem cell. Stem cells are a special form of cell, as they can make any cell type in the body, and so can provide building blocks for our organs and tissues.  

Strategies to repair the spinal cord are sorely needed, and whilst these findings must be treated with significant caution (as there was no group of patients to compare to and the improvements did not reach statistical significance), they are promising as typically for this group of patients, so far down the line after injury, no improvement would be expected. 

1. Curtis, E et al. 2018 A First-in-Human, Phase I Study of Neural Stem Cell Transplantation for Chronic Spinal Cord Injury Cell Stem Cell  Jun 1;22(6):941-950.e6. doi: 10.1016/j.stem.2018.05.014

​Words can be powerful when spoken or in thought. Words are used on so many different levels from the expression of your thoughts to the decision you will make within the moment.Peace is delivered with words but also wars are started by the spoken or written word.

With the technological development of the internet and mobile phones, words are used more now than ever. The average person uses their mobile phone for approximately four hours per day and around 18.7 billion text messages are sent around the world on a daily basis. And we can’t forget the amount of words we use on our social media platforms. I think you’ll agree that’s a great quantity of words.

This just shows how important words are for our social integration and how powerful words can be. They say that concurring thoughts will eventually become your actions so should we be careful at what we think? Many people think that words, once spoken, cannot be taken back and the action of those words, even if they were delivered within seconds, will last and echo for a lot longer. 
So should we be more careful with what we choose to say? Do words really cut deeper than a knife and leave longer lasting invisible scars? Could our words to a situation decide the overall reactive decision to a situation? Can our words totally change a decision within a scenario? The answer is “Yes!” Our action will always lead to a reaction and the outcome will always depend on our words.

Positive thinking doesn’t mean that you keep your head in the sand and ignore life’s less pleasant situations. Positive thinking just means that you approach unpleasantness in a more positive and productive way. You think the best is going to happen, not the worst.

The Health Benefits of Positive Thinking
Researchers continue to explore the effects of positive thinking and optimism on health. Health benefits that positive thinking may provide include:

• Increased life span
• Lower rates of depression
• Lower levels of distress
• Greater resistance to the common cold
• Better psychological and physical well-being
• Better cardiovascular health and reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease
• Better coping skills during hardships and times of stress

You can learn to turn negative thinking into positive thinking. The process is simple, but it does take time and practice – you’re creating a new habit, after all.

If you are looking for another way to relieve discomfort that doesn’t involve drugs, some age-old techniques – including meditation and yoga as well as newer variations, may help reduce your need for pain medication.
Research suggests that because pain involves both the mind and the body, mind-body therapies may have the capacity to alleviate pain by changing the way you perceive it. How you feel pain is influenced by your genetic makeup, emotions, personality, and lifestyle. It’s also influenced by past experience. If you’ve been in pain for a while, your brain may have rewired itself to perceive pain signals even after the signals aren’t being sent any more. Stress and pain are tightly connected and can have a strong influence on each other. Therefore, if positive thinking is able to counter some of the effects of chronic stress, it could also help lower pain levels.

When your state of mind is generally optimistic, you’re better able to handle everyday stress in a more constructive way. That ability may contribute to the widely observed health benefits of positive thinking.

The tongue is the strongest muscle in the human body so be careful on how you use it may it be online by txt or word of mouth because “words can only be forgiven not forgotten”.

​   JOIN OUR INSIGHT TIMER CERVICAL MYELOPATHY
   MEDITATION GROUP

​Methods
The prominent journals publishing research related to the spine were first identified from a database of journals. This list of journals including: Spine, Journal of Spinal Disorders, European Spine Journal, Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine, Spinal Cord, Spine Journal, Journal of Spinal Disorders & Techniques, and Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine were searched using the database Web of Science which provides all articles ever published from the selected journals. Articles were then sorted by most citations and the top 100 cited articles were analysed. Articles were then sorted by topic including, 

1. Biomechanics 
2. Cervical myelopathy/Cervical fusion 
3. Degenerative disc disease, deformity 
4. Iliac bone graft morbidity 
5. Low back pain 
6. Lumbar spinal stenosis/Lumbar fusion 
7. Neck pain 
8. Osteoporotic compression fractures 
9. Psychosocial aspects of neck and low back pain 
10. Tesearch methodology 
11. Spinal fusion/implantants and rhBMP-2
12. Spinal metasteses (cancer)
13. Thoracic fusion 
14. Trauma/spinal cord injury.​

Why is this important?
The number of times an article was cited is often an indicator of how popular a topic is. This suggests that cervical myelopathy, despite its prevalence and impact upon a person, has received relatively little impactful research. Impactful is an important caveat here; a terrible study, or one that only marginally advances the field, will probably not receive a lot of citations in the future. This means that researchers that look at myelopathy need to produce impactful research that helps us understand mechanisms of the disease, its impact, etc. that may help drive more interest and produce more highly impactful work and better treatments.

It isn’t all doom and gloom, however. On Aug 1, 2018 I searched pubmed (another database of research articles) for all research containing the keywords: 

1. cervical myelopathy 
2. cervical Spondylotic myelopathy 
3. degenerative cervical myelopathy 
4. cervical laminectomy 
5. anterior discectomy and fusion 
6. cervical disc replacement 
7. cervical corpectomy
8. posterior cervical discectomy

and got 24,107 results. Similarly if you search “low back pain, one would get 34,002 results in the same database. This suggests that there is a decent amount of research compared to low back pain, but not nearly in the ball park as other disabling conditions such as multiple sclerosis (~80,000 articles). This suggests that more research is needed in all facets of the disease, but this research also needs to be well designed, rigorous, and impactful. It also means that more publicity is needed for this disease to generate more interest in the scientific community.

References

1. Badhiwala JH et al., Highly cited works in spinal disorders: the top 100 most cited papers published in spine journals. Spine. Epub ahead of print Jun 8, 2018

As patients survive longer with neurological diseases and as we expect longer stays in space, it becomes more and more important to understand any links between immobility and neurogenesis for two reasons. Firstly, changes to neurogenesis could affect brain health – it may be that changes to neural stem cells following reduced mobility feed back into disease like MS or DCM and actually become part of the cause. Adult neurogenesis is greatly decreased in Huntington’s disease patients when compared to healthy people, suggesting that there could be a link between reduced neurogenesis may play a role in the disease3. Secondly, exploring the link may help us understand the effects of exercise on the brain. Reduced movement has been shown to impair memory function and learning4 and to change the chemical environment of the brain5. We may also be able to better understand the link between exercise and prevention of neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, which is associated with degeneration in neurogenic areas6.
​
For all the above reasons, a team from Italy lead by Rafaella Adami recently set out to explore whether reduced movement lead to changes in neural stem cells7.
The study was done in mice. While mice do have some notable differences to humans in terms of the neural stem cells (see below), these experiments require the dissection of large amounts of brain tissue and immediately after death and so are practically impossible to do in humans. 

What were the results of the study?
Firstly the researchers looked at the number of proliferating (dviding/reproducing) cells found in the SVZ. In this case, proliferating cells were the stem cells that were dividing to make neurons, so more proliferation suggests more neurogenesis. Adami et al found that there were 70% fewer proliferating cells in the HU mice compared to controls – so neurogenesis was reduced. 

This lead the team to their second key result: reducing movement reduces the maturation capabilities of neural stem cells. 
Next, Adami  et al explored whether the metabolism (energy production) of neural stem cells in HU mice had changed. Most neural stem cells produce energy by a process called glycolysis, which by produces a byproduct known as lactate. HU stem cells produced significantly less lactate than controls cells, suggesting that reduced movement gives neural stem cells an abnormal metabolism. 
​
Finally, to try and understand what could be underlying these changes, the researchers looked at gene expression in the neural stem cells. They found that expression of 2 genes were significantly different between HU and control samples. A gene known as CDKrap1 was 3.5x lower in HU stem cells than in controls, while a gene known as cdk6 was 2.3x high in HU stem cells. Overall, it appears that reduced movement changes the genes expressed in neural stem cells. Adami et al haven’t commented on what these different levels of cdkrap5 might mean, but they think that the higher levels of cdk6, which helps keep cells in the resting state rather than dividing, could explain the reduced neurogenesis seen in HU mice.

​What do these results mean for DCM?
Right now, not a great deal. This work is still very much ‘blue sky research’ intended to see if the neural stem cells are worth further study for neurological disease (or space travel!). While its fascinating to see that that restricting movement leads to change in neural stem, we have to be cautious in how far we extrapolate the results to humans. Firstly, while mice and humans may be similar, they aren’t the same (newly born neurons rom the SVZ actually end up in a totally different places in mice and people). Secondly, while DCM can involve reduction in movement if nerve damage progresses to an extreme stage or pain becomes debilitating, it’s not quite as clear cut as in this mouse model. Therefore it’s hard to say if neural stem cells would undergo the same changes in DCM patients as they do here. Thirdly, it’s difficult to understand the implications of the results when we don’t fully understand how/if reduced neurogenesis contributes to neurological diseases. Furthermore, the consequences of reduced neurogenesis are likely to vary across conditions – changes to neurogenesis might be completely in DCM than they are for something like Huntington’s. 
The next step will be to explore the nature of neural stem cells in other mouse models of reduced movement, such as multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury and DCM to see if neural stem cells undergo similar reductions in neurogenesis. Then we’ll need to determine how/if reduced neurogenesis might contribute to the problems we see in these conditions. If such a contribution was confirmed, this could be a breakthrough in our understanding of how DCM develops. We might even then be able to developing new treatments which target the neural stem cells themselves. However, there are many steps we must take before we reach that stage – for now we’ll have to move slowly. Watch this space for more!

​

​I’ve been a little Norman Bates lately; stable one day, struggling with my myelopathy persona the next but I’m quite proud of myself.  I’ve reached out to people to try to reconnect and everyone’s been so generous with their time and considerate of my condition. I’ve been going to events and sometimes only staying an hour; but enjoying that hour.I went to a lovely patisserie for coffee and cake this week but told Diane I could only stay an hour because I can’t stand independently, or straighten, if I sit over the hour. Also I’m learning how to be a bit precious. My husband calls me the princess and the pea because everything has to be just so.  If a chair is too soft my back spasms, if my shoe laces are too tight I can’t put shoes on, if my teacup is too full I can’t lift it, if there is spice in my food I get IBS.  I went from being totally laid back, able to eat street food cooked by greasy haired, uncompliant to hygiene standards, cooks to being very needy.  I don’t beat myself up about it.  I’m not elderly or frail or sick but titanium is holding my neck together and if I’m not careful my cervical spine might topple like Jenga bricks again.  So, when I’m chatting I need my friend opposite me, not beside.  I can get in a car, but I can’t get out without help.  I need to be front of the loo queue because I can’t hold it. If we can’t be fussy now, when can we?

I am happy.   It’s a glorious feeling.  Once I get going I feel my life is full of possibility even though by four I will be totally slayed with pain and tiredness, my limbs will be unresponsive, and I will sway around the house, everything falling from my grip…I’ll end up in bed for a few hours but at nine I will be enjoying Love Island with my family. If I think of 2018 so far I’ve been part of a training video to help doctors diagnose myelopathy earlier, I’ve been skyped (never skyped before) by Dr Nidhi who is gathering info to support early diagnosis.  I’ve enjoyed two book club gatherings.  Met Sharon for a pub lunch.  Gone for innumerable coffees and cake and have the calories to prove it.
​
Caitlan recently returned from a geography trip to Iceland.  Putting on her crampons, about to step foot on a glacier she thought of me.  My mum will never do this, she’ll never see this powerful landscape with winds that take your breath away.   It’s true.  But it’s ok.  I’ve come a long way since my dramatic arrival at A&E.  I’m walking.  I’m sleeping.  I’m managing my pain.  I’m with my family.  I think of my life like Bear Grylls’ The Island.  Myelopathy is my island.  I’m not a giver upper and I’ve learnt to enjoy simple things.
Right now I’m sitting by the window, the sun is shining, a squirrel has just run the gauntlet across my garden fence while my two dogs are going bonkers.  Spanish rap is playing. I’m glad to be alive; the alternative is an eternity I’d like to avoid.  I’ve come to not expect too much of myself.  Myelopathy is the long game.

You can check out Alison’s blog My Hell opathy here 
​

Neck Muscles and CSM– An Update Part 1 of 2

Why was this study conducted?
As outlined previously, the amount of fat found within muscles has been linked to the type of symptoms experienced by patients; including the amount of neck pain and walking ability. This new study was done on a separate cohort of patients than the previous study and included measures of neck strength and other quality of life scales not assessed previously which addresses some weaknesses of the previous study.

How was the study conducted?
This study used MRI imaging to measure the size and the amount of fat in muscles in the neck. Neck strength was measured by clinicians using a hand held force sensor. Several questionnaires were performed to assess function, pain, and quality of life. Importantly, this study used what is called a “cross-sectional’ design meaning it only looks at 1 time point. 

What was discovered?
Larger muscles and larger amounts of lean muscle (i.e. muscle without fat) in the neck were associated with increased strength. (We already knew this in general, but it is good to ensure there isn’t something different about patients with cervical myelopathy). More fat in muscles of the neck was associated with more disability measured by the mJOA. Importantly, neither strength, muscle size, or muscle fat were associated with pain, duration of symptoms, neck disability index, or quality of life in this study.

Why is this important?
Between the previous study linked above and this study, it appears that muscle fat may be a biomarker of disability and function in patients with myelopathy.  Currently there are no biomarkers for myelopathy, which makes it difficult to assess how severe it is or give an idea of how things will develop.  More research will be needed to investigate the usefulness of muscle fat as a biomarker, but given that it can be quantified based on existing widely avaliable imaging techniques, it could enter routine clinical practice quickly.
 
Why could muscle fat relate to the severity of myelopathy?
One reason this is being investigated is that fat infiltrates muscle as a response to nerve injury and disuse. For example, if a nerve is injured the nerve doesn’t tell the muscle to contract as much and it allows more fat to become deposited within the muscle itself. 
    
References

1. Fortin M et al. Relationship Between Cervical Muscle Morphology Evaluated By MRI, Cervical Muscle Strength And Functional Outcomes In Patients With

Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy. Musculoskeletal Science and Practice. 38; epub 2018: 1-7 

1. Fortin M, et al. Association Between Paraspinal Muscle Morphology, Clinical Symptoms and Functional Status in Patients With Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy. Spine (PhilaPa 1976). 2016 May 23

We don’t really know what symptoms a “typical” patient with myelopathy has. 
In fact, the huge number of often quite subtle and non-specific symptoms is probably one of the main reasons why early diagnosis is so challenging (Davies et al., 2018).
 
When medical students prepare for exams they tend to learn stereotypical descriptions of conditions. For myelopathy, this might be a patient with walking problems and clumsy hands.

​However, increasingly symptoms that one might never consider could be linked with myelopathy are emerging from the shadows.

Depressed or anxious mood is one such symptom (Stoffman et al., 2005). 
In recent years we have realised that myelopathy patients suffer from high levels of depressed or anxious mood and that this often improves after spinal surgery. But we have had little understanding of why this is the case.

A recent study from Japan has provided a little more insight (Sawada et al., 2018). The Japanese team studied the activity levels of various sites in the brain in myelopathy patients before and after surgery. They also studied individuals without myelopathy as a control group for comparison.
To do this, the team asked participants to do a simple finger-tapping exercise whilst they observed activity levels in the brain using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

The team found that before surgery individuals in the myelopathy group had a significantly higher activation in an area of the brain called the supplementary motor area compared to individuals in the group without myelopathy.
Next the team found that activation of brain areas, including the anterior cingulate cortex, the supplementary motor area and the thalamus significantly correlated with depression. This meant that the greater a patient’s depression, the greater the activation they had in these brain areas.  
Finally, the team found that both depression and activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and supplementary motor area decreased following surgery for myelopathy. 
Interesting!

The team argue that up to now surgeons have focussed on the “typical” symptoms such as the clumsy hands and walking problems when deciding whether to operate. They believe that their work may lead to future surgical decisions taking more account of the psychological symptoms too!

Davies, B.M., Mowforth, O.D., Smith, E.K., and Kotter, M.R. (2018). Degenerative cervical myelopathy. BMJ 360, k186.
Sawada, M., Nakae, T., Munemitsu, T., and Hojo, M. (2018). Cortical Reorganizations for Recovery from Depressive State After Spinal Decompression Surgery. World Neurosurg. 112, e632–e639.
Stoffman, M.R., Roberts, M.S., and King, J.T. (2005). Cervical spondylotic myelopathy, depression, and anxiety: a cohort analysis of 89 patients. Neurosurgery 57, 307–313; discussion 307-313.