Gene expression pattern may predict conversion to MS

CIS (clinically isolated syndrome) refers to someone's first MS-like symptom and is a valuable phase of the disease to study. Scientists are interested in learning what causes these initial symptoms to occur in the first place, and why some people with CIS go on to develop MS while others don't.

A team of researchers at UCSF have made some new discoveries about the nature of CIS by using gene expression techniques. They analyzed blood samples of 37 CIS subjects and 29 controls using a gene expression microarray (a chip that analyzes the transcription levels of ~40,000 genes) to see which genes had higher or lower activity in CIS subjects. They found a set of 975 genes that distinguished the CIS subjects from the healthy controls. A number of genes that promote inflammation were downregulated (had lower activity) in the CIS subjects -- this is surprising because MS involves inflammation so one might expect these genes to have higher activity. The researchers also found sets of genes that classified the CIS subjects into four subgroups. One of the subgroups had a higher risk of conversion to MS, so the researchers looked at its gene activity pattern. One of the most underexpressed genes in this subgroup was TOB1 which represses T cell proliferation, suggesting that control of T cell division plays a role in determining whether CIS will develop into MS.

Finally, the scientists analyzed TOB1 gene variants in a group of 1200 MS subjects who had either "mild" or "severe" MS, and found variants that were associated with severity. So regulation of T cell division may also play a role in MS progression.

This paper is open access, so if you like reading scientific papers I recommend checking it out to follow the sequence of steps this team took. It also has an impressive variety of charts and graphs for those who are connoisseurs of visual data representation!