About 10-15% of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) present with gradually increasing neurological disability, a disorder known as primary-progressive multiple sclerosis (PPMS). Compared with relapse-onset multiple sclerosis, people with PPMS are older at onset and a higher proportion are men. Inflammatory white-matter lesions are less evident but diffuse axonal loss and microglial activation...

Clinically isolated syndromes (CIS), such as optic neuritis, brainstem or spinal cord syndromes are frequently the first clinical presentations of multiple sclerosis. However, not all CIS patients develop multiple sclerosis and in those who do, disability is highly variable. In previous follow-up studies, brain lesions on T2-weighted MRI are associated with increased risk of multiple sclerosis ...

Intrathecal antibody production is a hallmark of multiple sclerosis and humoral immunity is thought to play an important role in the inflammatory response and development of demyelinated lesions. The presence of lymphoid follicle-like structures in the cerebral meninges of some multiple sclerosis patients indicates that B-cell maturation can be sustained locally within the CNS and contribute to...

Role of the innate immune system in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis. et al. Rituximab in patients with primary progressive multiple sclerosis: results of a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled multicenter trial. Differentiation block of oligodendroglial progenitor cells as a cause for remyelination failure in chronic multiple sclerosis. Retland E, et al. Differential effects of Th1...

Background A major cause of disability in secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (SPMS) is progressive brain atrophy, whose pathogenesis is not fully understood. The objective of this study was to identify protein biomarkers of brain atrophy in SPMS. Methods We used surface-enhanced laser desorption-ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry to carry out an unbiased search for serum proteins...