School of Life Sciences, Forman Christian College (A Chartered University) Lahore, Lahore, Pakistan.
Rashid Latif Medical College, Lahore, Pakistan.
PLoS One. 2023 Aug 3;18(8):e0285022. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0285022. eCollection 2023.
Our study aimed to evaluate whether assessing α-synuclein expression levels in blood samples could provide a reliable and straightforward alternative to existing diagnostic and prognostic methods for neurodegenerative disorders, including multiple sclerosis (MS). We specifically investigated if α-synuclein and IL-6 expression levels from serum and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) could accurately predict MS severity in patients using a two-dimensional approach.
We designed a case-control study to analyze the expression of α-synuclein and IL-6 in the peripheral blood of an MS patient group (n = 51) and a control group (n = 51). We statistically evaluated the PBMCs and serum profiles of α-synuclein and IL-6 in MS patients, along with their age of onset, disease duration, tobacco exposure, and Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) score, using SPSS V22.0 software and GraphPad Prism V9.0.
Our findings indicate that α-synuclein production was significantly downregulated in MS patients. Principal component analysis also revealed distinct profiles between MS patients and controls. PBMCs and serum profiles of α-synuclein correlated with the EDSS score, suggesting that disease severity can be predicted using α-synuclein profiles. Moreover, α-synuclein showed a significant correlation with IL-6 and age of onset. Lastly, receiver operating characteristic curves of PBMCs and serum activity of α-synuclein profiles displayed discrimination with area under the curve values of 0.856 and 0.705, respectively.
Our results imply that measuring α-synuclein levels in both serum and PBMCs could be a valuable method for diagnosing and predicting MS severity, potentially serving as a non-invasive biomarker for the disease.
我们的研究旨在评估评估血液样本中α-突触核蛋白表达水平是否可以为神经退行性疾病（包括多发性硬化症（MS））的现有诊断和预后方法提供可靠和直接的替代方法。我们特别研究了使用二维方法，α-突触核蛋白和白细胞介素 6（IL-6）在血清和外周血单核细胞（PBMC）中的表达水平是否可以准确预测 MS 患者的严重程度。
我们设计了一项病例对照研究，以分析 MS 患者组（n = 51）和对照组（n = 51）的外周血中α-突触核蛋白和 IL-6 的表达情况。我们使用 SPSS V22.0 软件和 GraphPad Prism V9.0 统计评估了 MS 患者的 PBMCs 和血清中α-突触核蛋白和 IL-6 的谱，以及他们的发病年龄，疾病持续时间，吸烟暴露和扩展残疾状况量表（EDSS）评分。
我们的研究结果表明，MS 患者的α-突触核蛋白生成明显下调。主成分分析也显示了 MS 患者和对照组之间的明显差异。α-突触核蛋白与 EDSS 评分相关，表明可以使用α-突触核蛋白谱来预测疾病严重程度。此外，α-突触核蛋白与 IL-6 和发病年龄之间存在显著相关性。最后，PBMCs 和血清α-突触核蛋白谱的活性的受试者工作特征曲线显示，曲线下面积值分别为 0.856 和 0.705，具有区分能力。
我们的结果表明，测量血清和 PBMC 中的α-突触核蛋白水平可能是诊断和预测 MS 严重程度的一种有价值的方法，有可能成为该疾病的非侵入性生物标志物。
