GAZING into the eyes of a patient with multiple sclerosis (MS) could be a fast and cheap way of diagnosing the extent of their disease.
MS slowly destroys the fatty myelin sheath insulating nerve fibres. Although brain imaging can track the progress of the disease, the scanners are expensive. Suspecting that the demyelination would also affect eye movements, neurologist John Leigh at the University Hospitals in Cleveland, Ohio, and his team gave 50 MS patients simple eye tests.
They asked patients to look back and forth at a pencil and the doctor’s nose or to keep their eyes on a…
