Patient characteristics.

<p>Patient characteristics.</p

Lactate concentration [mM] in CSF of CIS patients with inflammatory plaques vs. number of inflammatory plaques, with linear fit.

<p>Lactate concentration [mM] in CSF of CIS patients with inflammatory plaques vs. number of inflammatory plaques, with linear fit.</p

Significance of differences in CSF metabolites between CIS patients with and without inflammatory MS plaques and controls.

<p>P values for a nonparametric (Mann-Whitney U) and a parametric (Fisher's PLSD) test (see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0000595#s4" target="_blank">Materials and Methods</a> for details of the statistical evaluation). Bold characters indicate significance at the p<0.05 level, while regular characters indicate borderline significance (0.05Figure 1 (see also <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0000595#pone-0000595-t002" target="_blank">Table 2</a> for a summary).</p

Selected CSF metabolite concentrations [mM] in patients with or without inflammatory brain MS plaques (abbreviated ‘inflamm’ and ‘non-infl’, respectively), and controls.

<p>Data represent means±s.e.m.</p

Significant differences between individual CIS groups and controls.

<p>Upward (downward) arrows indicate significantly increased (decreased) CSF metabolite concentrations [mM] for CIS groups. The significance threshold was set to p<0.05. Parametric multiple-comparison tests (Fisher's PLSD) and nonparametric Mann-Whitney U tests yielded consistent results with respect to between-group significance (see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0000595#pone-0000595-t003" target="_blank">Table 3</a>). The arrow in parentheses indicates a trend close to significance (0.05Figure 1. Abbreviations: lac, lactate; phe, phenylalanine; BHIB, β-hydroxyisobutyrate; gln, glutamine; fru, fructose; ac, acetate; crn, creatinine; β-glc, β-glucose.</p

Scattergrams for lactate and acetate CSF concentrations [mM] in patients with or without inflammatory brain MS plaques (abbreviated ‘inflamm’ and ‘non-inflamm’, respectively), and controls.

<p>Marked deviations from normal distribution are readily recognized for lactate (inflamm) since data are clustered at low values (around 2.2 mM), but also for acetate (inflamm) where data are clustered at high values (around 0.16 mM).</p

Two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional CSF metabolite plot, based on the first three principal components obtained by PCA (projection angle changed relative to Figure 5).

<p>All CIS patients with inflammatory plaques (red dots), except for two, are clustered within the broken ellipse that also contains four data points from patients without inflammatory plaques (black dots).</p

Two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional CSF metabolite plot, based on the first three principal components obtained by PCA.

<p>All control subjects (green dots) are clustered within the broken ellipse that also contains one data point from each of the groups with and without inflammatory plaques (red and black dots, respectively).</p

Sensitivity of individual MTR statistical mapping analysis.

<p>MTR maps of 6 controls were decreased uniformly in MTR by 1 to 15%. Statistical mapping analyses of these modified MTR maps were then assessed and quantified using the predefined threshold showing presence of clusters for all subjects for a 4% decrease in MTR.</p

Demographic and clinical characteristics of patients.

<p>ON: Optic Nerve, SC: Spinal Cord, B: Brainstem, H: Hemisphere.</p