For many years, the scientific community has known that the risk of Multiple Sclerosis is markedly higher among people that have been exposed to the Epstein-Barr virus, the virus which causes infectious mononucleosis (commonly called “mono”). However, it isn’t clear why only a tiny fraction of individuals exposed to “mono” go on to develop MS.
Now new research has uncovered a likely explanation why the vast majority of individuals exposed to the mono virus don’t go on to develop multiple sclerosis. According to the study, those who escape MS despite having ever suffered a mono infection have a gene mutation which helps them sidestep the MS risk.
Data shows that at least 90% of all people are exposed to EBV at some point in their lives, and some of these develop mono, which causes various symptoms like fatigue, fever and swelling of lymph nodes. The question has always been; why is it that despite the widespread prevalence of EBV among all populations, just a tiny fraction go on to develop multiple sclerosis? This latest study provides a potential explanation for this disparity.
The researchers found that people who develop mono and also have the HLA-E*01:01 genetic variant in their immune system go on to develop MS while individuals without this variant don’t develop MS despite a history of exposure to EBV.
These findings were obtained after analyzing the data on at least 487,000 individuals. This information was obtained from the UK Biobank, a research and biomedical databank having information on more than half a million adults in the UK. They analyzed the data to find those having the HLA gene variant in question and then examined the medical records of those people to see if a diagnosis of infectious mononucleosis existed on their records.
After accounting for confounding factors like childhood obesity, smoking and several genetic markers of relevance, the team found that having the HLA-E*01:01 variant increased MS risk among people ever diagnosed with mono in comparison to those who either had the genetic variant but hadn’t suffered from mono, or those with different variants of this gene who had ever suffered from mono.
Furthermore, for individuals who inherited this variant from their mother and father, the MS risk shot up by 65%, according to Andrea Nova, the lead author of the study. This genetic predisposition coupled with a mono diagnosis could give medical teams an early line of investigation to identify those who could go on to develop MS. Early MS diagnosis may also be possible, thereby allowing prompt treatment to begin.
This growing body of scientific information about the drivers of MS development could provide valuable insights for biopharmaceutical firms like Clene Inc. (NASDAQ: CLNN) focused on treating conditions like MS that result from neuronal dysfunction.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to Clene Inc. (NASDAQ: CLNN) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/CLNN
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