| خلاصه مقاله | Background and Objective: Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a progressive disease of the nervous system that leads to demyelination of the nerves and is more common in young adults, especially women. The viral infections are considered to be of particular relevance. The expression of the env gene of human endogenous retrovirus (HERV) like MSRV is considered the risk factor for bringing up MS and disease progression. The present study aimed to investigate the correlation of HERV in MS patients.
Material & Methods: 130 subjects were enrolled in a case-control study at two tertiary university hospitals from Tabriz (Imam and Razi), Iran. Of these, 65 subjects were MS patients serving as the case group, and 65 subjects were healthy individuals serving as the control group. After the DNA extraction from all samples, each sample was analysed by RT-PCR with two sets of primers to detect specifically HERV-W env.
Results: In the case group, 19 (29.2%) patients were male and 46 (70.8%) patients were female. However, in the control group, 21 (32.3%) subjects were male and 44 (67.7%) subjects were female. No significant difference was found between groups in gender (p = 0.70). In our study, the expression of the env gene of HERVs was observed in 10 (15/38%) and two (3/07%) % specimens in the case and control groups, respectively. The analysis found no meaningful difference between groups in this regard.
Conclusion: It can be concluded that the expression of HERV-env genes may be involved in the development of MS in these patients. Nevertheless, to prove these findings, more extensive studies with a large sample size are needed. |