Heat Shock Proteins in Multiple Sclerosis Pathogenesis: Friend or Foe?

Abstract

Multiple Sclerosis is a complex chronic inflammatory, neurodegenerative disease conditioned by genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors. Main pathological features of MS include areas of focal demyelination of white matter characterized by gliosis, neuron and oligodendrocyte loss. Neurodegenerative as well as immune-mediated processes play a role in the pathogenesis of this disease. One of these immunogenic factors could be represented by the heat shock proteins. HSP exhibit cytoprotective and cytostimulatory effects due to their molecular chaperones role, in many brain model misfolding diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, whereas still no unambiguous results have been reported for autoimmune disorders of the central nervous system such as Multiple Sclerosis. Actually, either positive or negative HSP role seems to depend on HSP family and on their intracellular or extracellular localization. It will be interesting to study drug treatment which overexpress or inhibit HSP production in order to gain much more information about the role of the HSP in this disease.