Humoral response against glial derived antigens in Parkinson's disease

To check whether glial cells have the ability to elicit adaptive immune response in Parkinson's disease and whether a change in this immune response can be observed over time. There is an increasing evidence that glial cells are involved in the neurodegenerative process in PD, in addition to neuronal structures. Measurement of autoantibodies against proteins of oligodendrocytes may serve as an indirect method to assess the level of glial cells activation or degeneration under in vivo conditions. Serum samples from 26 PD patients were collected twice, at baseline and after mean of 13 months. In addition, serum samples from 13 healthy controls matched for age and gender were assessed at one time point. IgG and IgM autoantibodies against myelin-oligodendrocyticglycoprotein (MOG), myelin basic protein (MBP), myelin-associated glycoprotein (MAG) and proteolipoprotein (PLP) were measured in all investigated subjects by a commercially available ELISA system (Mediagnost, Germany). In a group of PD significant decrease of IgG titers was observed for anti-MAG autoantibodies over the investigated time period (p < 0.05). For IgM antibodies, we observed statistically significant decrease in anti-MAG autoantibodies in the follow-up period (p < 0.05) and increase in anti-MBP and anti-PLP autoantibodies (p < 0.05). All antibody titers differed significantly between healthy control subjects and PD patients. Our study provides the evidence for the presence of humoral response against some glial derived antigens in PD. The increasing levels of anti MBP IgG and IgM might point to the value of this marker for monitoring disease progression.