Mina Mohammadinasr, et al. – Tabriz University of Medical Sciences.
Background: Multiple lines of evidence strongly link Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) infection history with MS, but the mechanisms linking prior EBV infection to MS remain unclear.
This Study: Mohammadinasr and colleagues examined the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of 30 patients with RRMS and controls for microRNAs (miRNAs) in exosomes, extracellular vesicles capable of transporting RNA and protein cargo between cells and of crossing the blood-brain barrier. While all subjects had some level of the EBV miRNAs BART9-3p and BART15, reflecting that the overwhelming majority of people have been infected with EBV, exosomes collected from patients with RRMS had significantly higher levels of these miRNAs (18.4-fold and 3.1-fold, respectively). This was accompanied by increases in exosomal miR-21-5p and miR-146a-5p, human miRNAs which are stimulated by EBV infection, and numerous pro-inflammatory cytokines in both CSF exosomes and serum.
Bottom Line: Exosomes may represent a new site at which reactivated EBV influences MS.
