Brain energy metabolism and multiple sclerosis: progress and prospects

Abstract

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune diseaseaccompanied with nerve pain and paralysis. Althoughvarious pathogenic causes of MS have been suggested,including genetic and environmental factors, how MS occursremains unclear. Moreover, MS should be diagnosed basedon clinical experiences because of no disease-specific biomarkerand currently available treatments for MS just canreduce relapsing frequency or severity with little effectson disease disability. Therefore, more efforts are requiredto identify pathophysiology of MS and diagnosis markers. Recent evidence indicates another aspect of MS pathogenesis,energy failure in the central nervous system (CNS). Forinstance, inflammation that is a characteristic MS symptomand occurs frequently in the CNS of MS patients can resultinto energy failure in mitochondria and cytosol. Indeed,metabolomics studies for MS have reported energy failurein oxidative phosphorylation and alteration of aerobic glycolysis. Therefore, studies on the metabolism in the CNS mayprovide another insight for understanding complexity of MSand pathogenesis, which would facilitate the discovery ofpromising strategies for developing therapeutics to treat MS. This review will provide an overview on recent progress ofmetabolomic studies for MS, with a focus on the fluctuationof energy metabolism in MS.