Non-esterified fatty acids in blood cell membranes from patients with multiple sclerosis

An overview of lipidomic analysis in different human matrices of multiple sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis is a chronic inflammatory and neurodegenerative disease of the central nervous system, and it is one of the most common neurological cause of disability in young adults. It is known that several factors contribute to increase the risk of development and pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis, nonetheless, but the true etiology of this pathology remains unknown. Similar to other inflammatory diseases, oxidative stress and lipid peroxidation are also associated to multiple sclerosis. Alterations in the lipid profile seem to be a hallmark of this pathology which can contribute to the dysregulation of lipid homeostasis and lipid metabolism in multiple sclerosis. Lipidomic studies analysed in this review clearly demonstrate the role of lipids in inflammatory processes, in immunity, and in the onset and development of multiple sclerosis. Several investigations reported alterations of some molecular lipid species, in particular, with decrease of fatty acids (FA) 18:2 and 20:4 and total polyunsaturated FA, with compensatory increases of saturated FA with shorter carbon chains. Oxidized phospholipids were reported in few studies as well. Also, it was shown that clinical lipidomics has potential as a tool to aid both in multiple sclerosis diagnosis and therapeutics by allowing a detailed lipidome profiling of the patients suffering with this disease.