Research projects

The primary objective is to perform a two years follow-up longitudinal study in patients diagnosed with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS), to analyze their expression levels of viral miRNAs of EBV, HHV-6A and HHV-6B found in isolated plasma exosomes and their possible relationship with the progression and the activity of the disease. As secondary objectives, the evolution of the expression levels of viral miRNAs of EBV, HHV-6A and HHV-6B found in exosomes isolated from plasma of patients with RRMS will be compared with: 1) the evolution of the viral load of EBV, HHV-6A and HHV-6B, and the evolution of IgG and IgM antibody titers against EBV and HHV-6 over the two years of follow-up; 2) the levels of expression of HLA-DR and HLA-DQ by quantitative RT-PCR, throughout the two years of follow-up.

After two years of follow-up:

- We have described, for the first time, the presence of the following miRNAs in samples from MS patients: hhv6b-miR-Ro6-2 (97.7%), 3-3p (4.7%), and 3-5p (95.3%), all of them from HHV-6B and U86 (55.8%) from HHV-6A. HHV-6B miRNAs: 1 and 4-3p were not detected.

- We did not find an association between the indicated miRNAs and the clinical parameters studied. We found an association between miR-U86 and Gadolinium-enhancing lesions: miR-U86 was not detected in the 15 patients with active lesions (patients with Gadolinium-enhancing lesions on MRI), while it was detected in 30.8% of patients without active lesions (p = 0.039).

- We did not find any association between EBV miRNAs isolated in plasma from MS patients and the clinical and radiological variables studied.