Protective Allele for Multiple Sclerosis HLA-DRB1*01:01 Provides Kinetic Discrimination of Myelin and Exogenous Antigenic Peptides.

Risk of the development of multiple sclerosis (MS) is known to be increased in individuals bearing distinct class II human leukocyte antigen (HLA) variants, whereas some of them may have a protective effect. Here we analyzed distribution of a highly polymorphous HLA- locus in more than one thousand relapsing-remitting MS patients and healthy individuals of Russian ethnicity. Carriage of HLA*15 and HLA*03 alleles was associated with MS risk, whereas carriage of HLA*01 and HLA*11 was found to be protective.

Genetic differences between primary progressive and relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis: The impact of immune-related genes variability.

Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic autoimmune disease of CNS with a highly heterogeneous clinical course. The role of the genetic variability in determination of MS course is not yet well established. We aimed to estimate the impact of immune-related genes variability in the genetic architecture of two clinically different MS courses - primary progressive (PPMS) and relapsing-remitting (RRMS).

Impact of 9p21.3 region and atherosclerosis-related genes' variants on long-term recurrent hard cardiac events after a myocardial infarction.

Atherosclerotic coronary artery disease (CAD) and myocardial infarction (MI) as its most severe clinical complication remain the leading causes of mortality in the majority of countries. Despite the progress in the treatment of MI, quite often the patients, after the first-time MI, develop subsequently a variety of adverse cardiovascular events. In this retrospective study we evaluated the contribution of allelic variations in 9p21.

Pharmacogenetics of glatiramer acetate therapy for multiple sclerosis: the impact of genome-wide association studies identified disease risk loci.

Aim: Association analysis of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) identified multiple sclerosis (MS) risk genetic variants with glatiramer acetate (GA) treatment efficacy.

Patients & Methods: SNPs in 17 GWAS-identified immune response loci were analyzed in 296 Russian MS patients as possible markers of optimal GA treatment response for at least 2 years.

Results: Alleles/genotypes of EOMES, CLEC16A, IL22RA2, PVT1 and HLA-DRB1 were associated by themselves with event-free phenotype during GA treatment for at least 2 years (p  = 0.

Variants of MicroRNA Genes: Gender-Specific Associations with Multiple Sclerosis Risk and Severity.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune neuro-inflammatory disease arising from complex interactions of genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors. Variations in genes of some microRNAs--key post-transcriptional regulators of many genes--can influence microRNAs expression/function and contribute to MS via expression changes of protein-coding target mRNA genes. We performed an association study of polymorphous variants of MIR146A rs2910164, MIR196A2 rs11614913, MIR499A rs3746444 MIR223 rs1044165 and their combinations with MS risk and severity.