PLoS ONE (Feb 2011)

The etiology of multiple sclerosis: genetic evidence for the involvement of the human endogenous retrovirus HERV-Fc1.

  • Bjørn A Nexø,
  • Tove Christensen,
  • Jette Frederiksen,
  • Anné Møller-Larsen,
  • Annette B Oturai,
  • Palle Villesen,
  • Bettina Hansen,
  • Kari K Nissen,
  • Magdalena J Laska,
  • Trine S Petersen,
  • Sandra Bonnesen,
  • Anne Hedemand,
  • Tingting Wu,
  • Xinjie Wang,
  • Xiuqing Zhang,
  • Tomasz Brudek,
  • Romana Maric,
  • Helle B Søndergaard,
  • Finn Sellebjerg,
  • Klaus Brusgaard,
  • Anders L Kjeldbjerg,
  • Henrik B Rasmussen,
  • Anders L Nielsen,
  • Mette Nyegaard,
  • Thor Petersen,
  • Anders D Børglum,
  • Finn S Pedersen

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0016652
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 6, no. 2
p. e16652

Abstract

Read online

We have investigated the role of human endogenous retroviruses in multiple sclerosis by analyzing the DNA of patients and controls in 4 cohorts for associations between multiple sclerosis and polymorphisms near viral restriction genes or near endogenous retroviral loci with one or more intact or almost-intact genes. We found that SNPs in the gene TRIM5 were inversely correlated with disease. Conversely, SNPs around one retroviral locus, HERV-Fc1, showed a highly significant association with disease. The latter association was limited to a narrow region that contains no other known genes. We conclude that HERV-Fc1 and TRIM5 play a role in the etiology of multiple sclerosis. If these results are confirmed, they point to new modes of treatment for multiple sclerosis.