. 2016 Nov 3;7:412. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2016.00412

Table 4.

Plasma sphingosines and ceramides are not affected by RRMS, independent from the treatment.

Correlation with	Disease duration	Time to last relapse	Time to next relapse	EDSS
n = (IFN-β/non-IFN-β)	69/56	67/54	29/27	33/27
C_14:0 ceramide^a	0.246^∗	0.001	0.107	0.243
C_16:0 ceramide^b	0.152	-0.115	0.149	0.030
C_18:0 ceramide^b	0.006	-0.174	0.062	0.014
C_20:0 ceramide^b	0.101	-0.064	0.250	0.146
C_24:0 ceramide^a	0.296^∗	0.112	0.022	0.112
C_24:1 ceramide^b	0.081	-0.254	0.078	0.218
C_16:0 sphinganine^b	0.237	0.057	0.201	-0.162
C_18:0 sphinganine^b	-0.092	0.008	0.052	-0.331
C_24:0 sphinganine^a	0.089	0.125	0.171	-0.105
C_24:1 sphinganine^a	-0.173	-0.049	-0.038	-0.197

Disease duration, time to the last or the next relapse and EDSS score were correlated to ceramides and sphinganines using Pearson or Spearman correlations, respectively. Data are shown as the correlation coefficient (R) with ^∗p ≤ 0.05. Missing data: since IFN-β therapy affected specific plasma ceramides and sphinganines, especially for these analytes patients treated with IFN-β were omitted; a = including patients treated with IFN-β; b = without patients treated with IFN-β; time to last relapse = two patients had their first relapse and were excluded; time to next relapse = only patients with a relapse before data collection was begun were included; EDSS = only patients with EDSS score evaluation on date of sample collection were included.