RESEARCH ARTICLE Humoral Responses to Diverse Autoimmune Disease-Associated Antigens in Multiple Sclerosis

To compare frequencies of autoreactive antibody responses to endogenous disease-asso-ciated antigens in healthy controls (HC), relapsing and progressive MS and to assess their associations with clinical and MRI measures of MS disease progression. Methods The study analyzed 969 serum samples from 315 HC, 411 relapsing remitting MS (RR-MS), 128 secondary progressive MS (SP-MS), 33 primary progressive MS (PP-MS) and 82 pa-tients with other neurological diseases for autoantibodies against two putative MS antigens CSF114(Glc) and KIR4.1a and KIR4.1b and against 24 key endogenous antigens linked to diseases such as vasculitis, systemic sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, Sjogren’s syndrome, systemic lupus erythematosus, polymyositis, scleroderma, polymyositis, dermatomyositis, mixed connective tissue disease and primary biliary cirrhosis. Associations with disability and MRI measures of lesional injury and neurodegeneration were assessed. Results The frequencies of anti-KIR4.1a and anti-KIR4.1b peptide IgG positivity were 9.8 % an