Chemokines have increasingly been implicated in inflammatory and
infectious disease of the central nervous system, both as
biomarkers and as molecules important in pathogenesis.
Multiple sclerosis is a disabling disease of unknown etiology, and recently
chemokines have been identified as being upregulated molecules in the disease. We were interested in how the
chemokine expression patterns in the central nervous system of a viral model of
multiple sclerosis, Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis virus-induced
demyelinating disease (TMEV-IDD), compared to that in humans with
multiple sclerosis. Cerebrospinal fluid and spinal cord tissue were analyzed for expression of a range of
cytokines and
chemokines. Three
chemokines, CXCL10, CXCL9, and CCL5 were strongly and specifically upregulated in both the cerebrospinal fluid and spinal cord in
chronic disease, a pattern identical to that in
multiple sclerosis. These data, the first study of
cytokines in central nervous system tissue and cerebrospinal fluid in TMEV-IDD, support the hypothesis that
multiple sclerosis is caused by
chronic infection with an as-yet unidentified pathogen, possibly a picornavirus.