Downregulation of IFNG-AS1 and UCHL1-AS1 in Peripheral Blood Cells of Multiple Sclerosis Patients: IFNG-AS1 as a Candidate Diagnostic Biomarker.

BACKGROUND: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurodegenerative and inflammatory disease affecting gray and white matter in the brain. Due to the highly variable presentation of MS, making a reliable long-term diagnosis based solely on initial clinical findings is extremely challenging. Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been shown in recent research to have a role as prospective biomarkers that may offer data to forecast the onset and course of disease. METHODS: A total of 100 healthy controls and 120 MS patients with 98 relapsing-remitting (RR), 10 primary progressive (PP), and 12 secondary progressive (SP) cases were included in the blood sample collection. Gene expression was assessed with quantitative real-time PCR. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was employed to evaluate the potential for diagnostic analysis of lncRNA levels. RESULTS: The expressions of IFNG-AS1 and UCHL1-AS1 were found to be significantly decreased (p < 0.0001) in patients compared to the control group. After adjustment for age using ANCOVA, IFNG-AS1 expression remained significantly lower in MS patients than in healthy controls (p < 0.0001). IFNG-AS1 may be considered a potential biomarker for MS diagnosis (AUC = 0.838). CONCLUSION: IFNG-AS1 demonstrates promising diagnostic potential for MS, whereas UCHL1-AS1 shows only modest discriminatory value. However, these findings are preliminary and require further validation with functional studies to confirm clinical utility.