A study was published this week that looked at the survival times between dogs with and dogs without MRI lesions and diagnosed with meningoencephalomyelitis of unknown etiology (MUE). MUE is diagnosed if a dog has evidence of CNS inflammation (meningitis, encephalitis, myelitis or a combination of these) without evidence of infectious etiology. Signs can be focal or multifocal, and age is irrelevant. To make this diagnosis an MRI, CSF tap, and infectious disease testing are performed. There is a subset of dogs that are diagnosed with immune mediated CNS disease that do not show evidence of disease on MRI but have all of the other markers of MUE. The purpose of this paper was to determine if there is a difference in survival between the two groups of dogs.
Results
A total of 73 dogs with MUE were included in the study. This included 19 dogs with a normal MRI and 54 with an abnormal MRI. The survival time was >107 months in both groups with a significantly longer survival in the normal MRI group. Neither group reached median survival in Kaplan-Meier survival, however. Death was secondary to MUE in 1/19 dogs with a normal MRI, and 18/54 in dogs with an abnormal MRI.
Below is the breakdown comparison between the two groups:
Remission – 68% of the normal MRI group; 53% of the abnormal MRI group.
Death within 3 months due to disease – 5% in the normal MRI group and 13% in the abnormal MRI group.