Peripheral immunity relate to disease progression and prognosis in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Background: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease. Abnormalities in the peripheral immune system in ALS have been paid attention; however, the results of changes in peripheral immune parameters were inconsistent.

Methods: A total of 1109 ALS patients were enrolled in the study. All patients received clinical evaluation and peripheral immune parameters measurement. The outcomes were analyzed by correlation analysis, multiple linear regression and cox survival analysis.

Results: We found that ALS patients had significantly higher percentage of CD4 T cells (39.3 vs. 37.1%, p < 0.001) and CD4/CD8 ratio (1.88 vs. 1.72, p = 0.011), significantly lower IgG (11.73 vs.12.82, p < 0.001) and IgA (2130.70 vs. 2284.8, p = 0.013) compared with the health controls. In the multivariate linear model, we found that each increase of 1.262, 0.278, and 4.44E-4 in ALSFRS-R scores were significantly associated with each increment of lymphocyte count, IgG, and IgA, respectively. However, each decrease of 0.341, 0.068, and 0.682 in ALSFRS-R score was associated with each increment in neutrophils, CD4 T cells, and CD4/CD8 ratio, respectively. Cox survival regression analysis showed that the death risk of ALS patients was related to the levels of C3 (HR 0.592, 95% CI 0.361-0.973).

Conclusion: We found that there were differences in peripheral immune parameters of ALS patients with the severity of the disease, especially neutrophil, lymphocyte, CD4 T, and IgG; C3 is an independent predictor of survival in ALS patients. More studies are needed to elucidate the mechanisms associated with altered immune parameters in ALS.