[Multiple sclerosis as a polygenic disease: an update]

Abstract

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory disease of the central nervous system. The observed type of heredity associated with MS is characteristic of polygenic diseases, which is produced by a joint contribution of a number of autonomously acting or interacting polymorphic genes. Recently to identify the genes responsible for genetic predisposition to MS two main approaches have been applied: (1) analysis of association of individual "candidate genes" with the disease and (2) analysis of the wide spectrum of chromosomal loci (complete genomic search) linkage with the disease in families with several MS patients. In the last two years, a new method, which borrowed the best approaches of the previous studies, genome-wide association screening (GWAS), which is based on the modern high-throughput DNA analysis, has been developed. This review describes reproduced (validated) results for individual genes and DNA loci located on the majority of chromosomes obtained using these three strategies as well as data on association of MS with allelic combinations of various genes.