The Role of the Proinflammatory and Anti-inflammatory Cytokines in Multiple Sclerosis

Abstract

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease affecting 2.5 million individuals globally. MS majorly affects younger adults, especially women, than males having an incidence ratio of 3:1. MS conditions are characterized by demyelination, axonal deterioration, gliosis, heterogeneous lesions, and lymphocytes entrance infiltrates into the CNS by breaching the blood brain barrier and leading to concurrent relapse remitting episodes. Environmental Factors have an essential role in the etiopathogenesis of the disease. The leukocytes infiltrate secrete the immune mediator's cytokines responsible for the inflammation milieu in the CNS and the disease progression through immune-mediated neurodegeneration. The Cytokines are the small protein molecules secreted for facilitating communication among other cells conducting a complex multicellular behavior. This review aims to discuss the role of the proinflammatory cytokines such as GM-CSF, IL-17, Il-6, IL-1β, IL-22, INF-γ accountable for the initiating and the MS progression. Even though the objective behind these inflammatory mediators' production is to protect the CNS tissue from further impairment, on the contrary sometimes they may severely damage the neurons, myelin sheath, and the other glial cells oligodendrocytes, microglia, and astrocytes in MS due to their pleiotropic nature whereas, the anti inflammatory cytokines such as IL-4 and IL-10 may possess protective role against MS which could potentially be a novel drug target and could lead us towards a new promising treatment for MS in the future.