Expression of TH1 and TH17 cytokines and transcription factors in multiple sclerosis patients: Does baseline T-Bet mRNA predict the response to interferon-beta treatment?

Received 26 March 2009; received in revised form 15 July 2009; accepted 21 July 2009. published online 20 August 2009.

Abstract

We studied the effect of one-year interferon (IFN)-beta treatment on the in vivo mRNA expression of IFN-γ, interleukin (IL)-17, T-bet and RoR-γt, on peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from 36 multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. In the total MS group, IFN-beta induced decrease in mRNA levels of IFN-γ and T-bet (p<0.0001), while the levels of IL-17 and RoR-γt remained similar. In both responders and non-responders, IFN-beta induced significant decrease of IFN-γ (p<0.0001 and p=0.011, respectively), while decrease in T-bet was detected only in responders (p<0.0001). Higher pre-treatment T-bet allowed prediction of the clinical response in the first year (β=0.601, p=0.036). Our preliminary findings suggest that T-bet expression might be a potential prognostic marker of treatment response to IFN-beta in MS.

Keywords: Multiple sclerosis, T-bet, IL-17, RoR-γt, Type 1 immunity, Interferon-beta

a Institute of Neurology, Clinical Centre of Serbia, Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade, Dr Subotica 6, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia

b Institute of Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade, Dr Subotica 1, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia

c Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Faculty of Economics, University of Belgrade, Kamenicka 6, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia

Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +381 11 2685 662.

PII: S0165-5728(09)00292-6

doi:10.1016/j.jneuroim.2009.07.010

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