Investigation of the level of visinin like protein 1 (VILIP-1) in relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis

Objectives: Multiple sclerosis is a chronic disease that affects both gray and white matter of the central nervous system in different localizations, possibly with autoimmune inflammatory, demyelination and axon loss and limiting the quality of life. It is the most frequent cause of neurologic disorder at young and middle age groups.Although the etiopathogenesisis not clearly understood, it is known that various signalling pathways in the cell level, inflammatory processes and immune system are important in pathogenesis of MS(1,2).Visinin like protein-1 (VILIP-1) which of the neuronal calcium (Ca2 +) sensor proteins (NCS); effects on neuronal differentiation, neurite growth, different synaptic plasticity and learning. VILIP-1 can use various signaling pathways at cell level and thought to play a role in the pathogenesis of various neurodegenerative diseases is an important research of recent years(3,4). In this study, we aimed to evaluate the serum VILIP-1 levels by obtaining peripheral blood cells of healthy volunteers and relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) patients, to compare the data between the groups and to provide information about the pathogenesis of MS. Moreover with this study results we aimed to reveal data that lead to new treatment methods with help of disability development indicators and prognosis that could be used at definitive diagnosis of RRMS patients. Material and Methods: At this study, we used 90 people who are followed at Dicle University Medical Faculty Education and Research Hospital. 35 of these patients have definite clinical RRMS diagnosis according to 2010 McDonald Criteria and are in remission, 30 of these have RRMS diagnosis according to 2010 McDonald Criteria and are in attack and 25 are healthy volunteers. We got once blood sample from patients and healthy control group. We compared levels of VILIP-1 of patients and healthy control group. We compared studied parameters with age, sex, duration of MS, clinical findings at first attack, disabilirty scores(EDSS) got during drawing blood sample, number of attacks, MR region involvement (periventricular, juxtacortical brain stem and spinal cord) and the treatments they received values. Results: In the triple group comparison with Kruskal-Wallis test; between VILIP-1 levels of RRMS cases and VILIP-1 levels of healthy volunteers were found to be significantly differences. In the double group comparison with Bonferroni correction Mann-Whitney U test, serum VILIP-1 levels of RRMS attack cases were found to be significantly lower than the VILIP-1 levels of healthy group. Remission cases of RRMS serum VILIP-1 levels were also found to be significantly lower than the VILIP-1 levels of healthy group (p <0.017 for double group comparisons). There were no significant differences between the groups in the RRMS attack and RRMS remission period. (P = 0.229) Conclusion: Our study supports the hypothesis that VILIP-1 has an effect on the pathogenesis of MS. In our study, while there was no significant difference between VILIP-1 levels in cases of RRMS attack and remission period, VILIP-1 levels of RRMS cases were significantly lower than healthy subjects. Key Words: Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis, VILIP-1,VSNL