By Charles Bankhead, Staff Writer, MedPage Today
Published: July 12, 2012
Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco and Dorothy Caputo, MA, BSN, RN, Nurse Planner
Almost half of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients had potassium-channel autoantibodies associated with known or possible adverse effects on neural tissue, German investigators reported.
IgG antibodies to KIR4.1 occurred in 47% of almost 400 MS patients compared with fewer than 1% of patients with other neurologic conditions and none of 59 healthy serum donors.
KIR4.1 appears to represent the first autoantigen associated with multiple sclerosis, as reported online in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“The antibody is present in a subgroup of persons with multiple sclerosis — 47% of the group that we analyzed — and it has biologic effects in vivo,” Bernhard Hemmer, MD, of the Technical University of Munich, and co-authors wrote in their summation.
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