Response of lymphocytes from multiple sclerosis patients to murine brain extract

Forty-seven patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), 21 subjects with neurological diseases other than MS (OND), 7 with miscellaneous disease (MD) and 21 healthy individuals (HI) were examined by the standard procedure of blast transformation for the in vitro response to mouse brain (MB), mouse kidney (MK) and mouse lung (ML) tissue extracts. Increased cellular response to MB was limited to the MS and OND groups, whereas high and low values of stimulation index to MK and ML were similarly observed in all groups of individuals examined. No correlation was found between the clinical activity of the MS patients and the in vitro response to MG. The possibility that low sensitivity of the technique and complexity of the antigenic composition of MS are determining factors in the results obtained in these studies is discussed.