Biological markers in multiple sclerosis

Abstract

Advances in treatments for MS and the prospect of more (and increasingly effective) therapies make the search for disease-related biomarkers essential and urgent. Markers are needed for subtyping the disease itself, and for detecting disease-specific inflammation, axonal damage, remyelination and individual responses to therapies. The current dearth of reliable markers reflects our lack of knowledge of MS aetiology and pathogenesis. New technologies promise to boost understanding of MS and help identify biological markers for different aspects of the disease. The study of cerebrospinal fluid is of primary importance, as this bodily fluid is most likely to contain traces of products of the pathological/reparative processes occurring at the lesional level.