Characterizing the Natural History of Inflammatory and Traumatic Myelopathies

Inflammatory and traumatic causes of myelopathy are a leading cause of disability in the United States. Inflammatory causes of myelopathy include multiple sclerosis, neuromyelitis, optica, and transverse myelitis. These conditions are associated with significant disability accrual regardless of application of approved FDA treatment regimen.

The proposed research seeks to retrospectively characterize the presenting clinical and pathological features of patients evaluated for inflammatory and traumatic myelopathy at the Johns Hopkins Neuroimmunology Clinic and Transverse Myelitis Center at the Kennedy Krieger Institute. The proposed chart review will also evaluate the natural history of disability progression, functional measures and other clinical parameters in these patients. This information will help update the current literature on the clinical presentation of multiple sclerosis, transverse myelitis and traumatic spinal cord injuries across all age groups. It may also help adequately inform clinicians and practitioners of observed trends in disability progression as well as functional measures and clinical features over time.

The Johns Hopkins Transverse Myelitis Center is the first Center of Excellence dedicated to the study of transverse myelitis, and has been a leader in characterizing the disease and developing appropriate treatment guidelines. The International Center for Spinal Cord Injury at Kennedy Krieger Institute is a leading rehabilitation spinal cord center in the United States for both traumatic and non-traumatic spinal cord injury. The ability to characterize the clinical presentation and progression of patients with spinal cord injury will be important in identifying and developing new therapies that will help improve function in such patients.