Nature: Large twin study reveals genetic and environmental factors in multiple sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory disease of the central nervous system and a common cause of neurological dysfunction in young adults

Researchers from the University of Zurich and other institutions have recently studied the peripheral immune signature of multiple pairs of identical twins to dissect the influence of genetic susceptibility and environmental factors

The research was led by Burkhard Becher of the Institute of Experimental Immunology at the University of Zurich and Eduardo Beltrán of the Institute of Clinical Neuroimmunology at the University of Munich

Research in recent years has clearly shown that genetic risk variants are necessary for the development of multiple sclerosis

For the study, the research team analyzed 61 pairs of identical twins

Burkhard Becher explained: "We are exploring a central question: in two genetically identical individuals, how can the immune system cause severe inflammation and massive neurological damage in one, but not at all in the other

The researchers used advanced techniques to characterize the twins' immune profiles in detail

"This ensures that we can get as much technical information as possible from these valuable samples," added Eduardo Beltrán, an expert in single-cell genomics

"Surprisingly, we found that the biggest differences in the twins' immune profiles were in cytokine receptors, the way immune cells communicate with each other

The researchers found that people with multiple sclerosis had increased sensitivity to certain cytokines, which led to increased activation of T cells in the blood

"Compared with previous studies that could not control for genetic susceptibility, the results of our study are particularly valuable," says Burkhard Becher

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Florian Ingelfinger, Lisa Gerdes et al.