Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a disease that affects the white matter of the central nervous system. In France, approximately 100,000 patients are affected. It is one of the most common neurological condition in young adults.
The presence of supernumerary oligoclonal bands (OCBs) in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in comparison to the serum was established in 2017 as a criterion for temporal dissemination in MS patients. This is a predictive factor of conversion to MS in the clinically isolated syndrome (CIS) and radiologically isolated syndrome (RIS), either in children or adults.
However, the main inconvenient of OCB analysis in CSF is the requirement of a lumbar puncture, which is a traumatising technique that may raise ethical concerns especially when it has to be performed in children.
Searching for OCBs in tears, which are more accessible, may represent an attractive alternative. Some published articles studying adult populations go in this direction, but there are no data in the literature regarding children.
The main gold of this study is to lead a multicentric, prospective study, to evaluate the diagnostic quality of tears in children with clinically isolated syndrome (CIS) and radiologically isolated syndrome (RIS) during a longitudinal follow-up.
