For the study, published in the journal Brain, researchers looked at blood levels of a special protein called serum neurofilament light chain (sNfL), which indicates the level of nerve cell damage and acts as a useful measure of how active the disease is.

These sNfL levels were combined with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scans, that showed the level of disease spread, and interpreted by a UCL-developed machine learning model, called SuStaIn (Subtype and Stage Inference).