Figure 2

Models of the change in retinal layer thicknesses and brain volume during MS course provoked by focal inflammatory activity. Red represents the prediction with focal inflammatory activity and blue, the prediction in the absence of measurable focal inflammatory activity. The dotted lines represent the 95% confident interval calculated by parametric bootstraps. (A) Peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (pRNFL); (B) ganglion cells plus inner plexiform layer (GCIPL); (C) whole brain volume; (D) gray matter volume and (E) thalamus volume. The Y axis represents the predicted relative change ([visit minus baseline]/baseline) in the eye or brain region. The X axis represents the time (years) from clinical onset. All models are linear spline mixed-effects models following the equation: \(\widehat{y } \sim activity*lspline\left(disease duration, knot=5\right)+(1\left|participant+1\right|eye:participant)\) for the retina, and \(\widehat{y } \sim activity*lspline\left(disease duration, knot=5\right)+(1|participant)\) for the brain. All the models were fitted using the “lme4” package for R.