Gene expression in PBMC from Multiple Sclerosis patients undergoing interferon beta therapy.. Homo sapiens

We studied the gene expression patterns in PBMC from relapsing remitting MS patients undergoing weekly IFN-ß-1a therapy. On the basis of two fold changes in expression levels and statistical analyses we selected a diagnostic set of 137 genes that were differentially expressed between pretreatment and IFN-ß-1a-treated MS patients. Some these 137 genes may provide the basis for lack of IFN-ß-1a response. Keywords: Drug response to Interferon beta therapy in Multiple Sclerosis patients. Overall design: We studied five RRMS patients with ages ranging from 32 to 46 years naïve to IFN-ß-1a therapy at the outset of the trial. The pretreatment and acute peripheral blood samples respectively were drawn the day before and the day after the start of the therapy. The chronic samples were drawn one day before the weekly treatment regimen approximately six months following the initiation of therapy. Mononuclear cells were purified from the fresh peripheral blood specimens using Ficoll-Paque density gradient separation. RNA was isolated from the PBMC using the Qiagen column purification procedure (Qiagen, Valencia, CA). We utilized the CodeLink Expression Bioarrays for the analysis of gene expression in PBMC.