An antibody found in the blood of people with multiple sclerosis (MS) may be present long before the onset of the disease and its symptoms, according to a study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 66th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, April 26 to May 3, 2014.
“If our results can be replicated in larger populations, our findings may help to detect MS earlier in a subgroup of patients,” said study author Viola Biberacher, MD, with Technical University in Munich, Germany. “Finding the disease before symptoms appear means we can better prepare to treat and possibly even prevent those symptoms. This finding also demonstrates that the antibody development to the KIR4.1 protein, a protein found in some people with MS, precedes the clinical onset of disease suggesting a role of the autoantibody in how the disease develops.”
For the study, 16 healthy blood donors who were later diagnosed with MS were compared to 16 healthy blood donors of the same age and sex who did not develop MS. Scientists looked for a specific antibody to KIR4.1. Samples were collected between two and nine months before the first symptoms of MS appeared.
Next, researchers looked at antibody levels in the blood at additional time points up to six years before and then after disease onset in those who had the KIR4.1 antibody in their blood.
All of the healthy controls tested negative for the KIR4.1 antibody. Of those who later developed MS, seven people tested positive for the antibodies, two showed borderline activity and seven were negative.
In the study, KIR4.1 antibodies were found in the people with pre-clinical MS several years before the first clinical attack. Concentrations of the antibody varied at different time points during pre-MS in individual people.
“The next step is to confirm these findings in larger groups and determine how many years before onset of disease the antibody response develops,” said Biberacher.
Notes about this multiple sclerosis research
The study was supported by the German Ministry for Education and Research and the German Competence Network for Multiple Sclerosis.
Contact: Rachel Seroka – AAN
Source: AAN press release
Image Source: The image is credited to GrahamColm and is licensed Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.
Additional Information: The research will be presented at the AAN 66th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, April 26 – May 3 2014. The abstract “Antibodies Against the Inward Rectifying Potassium Channel KIR4.1 Precede the Onset of Multiple Sclerosis” by Viola Biberacher, MD, Rajneesh Srivastava, Sudhakar Reddy Kalluri, Lucas Schirmer, MD, Dorothea Buck, MD, Rebecca C. Selter, MD, and Bernhard Hemmer, MD is available via the link.
