Cerebrospinal Fluid Electrophoretigrams in Optic Neuritis

Abstract

Published reports¹ indicate that optic neuritis of unknown etiology amounts to 30% of all such cases studied at the Eye Institute of New York, 40% at the Mayo Clinic, and 56% at The Johns Hopkins University. We are also informed that at least 50% of optic neuritis is due to multiple sclerosis. Since suitable biopsy material is not available in these patients, judgments as to cause are obliged to depend upon collateral evidence, especially cerebrospinal fluid examinations. In many types of neurologic disease the spinal fluid protein pattern has been studied.2-4 Kabat et al⁴ found an increase in cerebrospinal fluid γ-globulin in a very high proportion of cases of multiple sclerosis. It is emphasized, however, that such a finding is in no sense diagnostic or pathognomonic of multiple sclerosis. Roboz and her group² also state that multiple sclerosis produces a marked rise in γ-globulin along with a