The use of cytokine signature patterns: separating drug naive, interferon and natalizumab-treated multiple sclerosis patients

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory illness characterized by demyelination and axonal neurodegeneration. Here, we used serum samples from MS patients to demonstrate if cytokine signature patterns can separate different patient groups better than using single cytokines. In this case, we used cytokine profiling to demonstrate if cytokine signature patterns can separate MS patients treated with interferon or natalizumab from drug naive patients. Serum levels of eight individual cytokines (TNF alpha, IFN gamma, S100B, IL-1 beta, IL-6, IL-8, IL-17 and IL-23) in MS patients treated with interferons (n = 11) and natalizumab (n = 14) were measured and, in general, showed reduced levels compared to drug naive MS patients (n = 12). More evident changes were seen when analyzing cytokine signatures (i.e. summed value of all eight cytokines), which showed that patients treated with natalizumab and interferons showed significantly reduced cytokine signature levels than drug naive MS patients. Moreover, patients treated with natalizumab were separated from drug naive patients by almost 100% fidelity and that patients treated with natalizumab also had reduced levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines compared to patients treated with interferon. Overall, this study provides an example showing that the use of cytokine signatures may provide benefits over the analysis of single cytokines for the development of potential biomarkers.