Interferon-β Decreases the Hypermetabolic State of Red Blood Cells from Patients with Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory disease characterized by damage to the myelin sheath surrounding axons in the central nervous system. While the exact mechanism of this destruction is unknown, excess nitric oxide (NO) and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) have been measured in tissues and fluids obtained from people with MS. Here, incubation of interferon-beta (IFN-β), an MS drug with an unknown mechanism of action, with red blood cells (RBCs) obtained from people with MS provide evidence of a potential hypermetabolic state in the MS RBC that is decreased with IFN-β intervention. Specifically, binding of all three components of an albumin/C-peptide/Zn²⁺ complex to MS RBCs was significantly increased in comparison to control RBCs. For example, the binding of C-peptide to MS RBCs was significantly increased (3.4 ± 0.1 nM) compared to control RBCs (1.6 ± 0.2 nM). However, C-peptide binding to MS RBCs was reduced to a value (1.6 ± 0.3 nM) statistically equal to that of control RBCs in the presence of 2 nM IFN-β. Similar trends were measured for albumin and Zn²⁺ binding to RBCs when in the presence of IFN-β. RBC function was also affected by incubation of cells with IFN-β. Specifically, RBC-derived ATP and measurable membrane GLUT1 were both significantly decreased (56 and 24%, respectively) in the presence of IFN-β. Collectively, our results suggest that IFN-β inhibits albumin binding to the RBC, thereby reducing its ability to deliver ligands such as C-peptide and Zn²⁺ to the cell and normalizing the basal hypermetabolic state.