Author Spotlight: Unveiling the Pathway Linking Obesity to Autoimmune Inflammation in Multiple Sclerosis

We're interested in understanding how autoimmunity and multiple sclerosis or MS gets started. This research uses a variety of approaches to study how risk factors associated with MS.Lead to the development of autoimmunity. Experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis or EAE is a mouse model of MS that can be used to examine the effect of various risk factors on autoimmunity.

We have recently discovered the biological pathway of how one MS risk factor obesity, leads to heightened autoimmune inflammation in mice. Studies in the EAE model were critical to unraveling these mechanisms. EAE disease severity is often scored on a five point clinical scale.

However, this scale has limited sensitivity, and cannot distinguish whether clinical deficits are driven by inflammation or tissue damage. Histology on the spinal cord and brain is the gold standard method to assess inflammation and tissue damage in EAE. This protocol provides a simple method for measuring inflammation and tissue damage in the spinal cord and brain during EAE.

Our protocol can be used alongside the clinical scale to better characterize the severity of EAE. Our protocol measures the key histological features of EAE, including immune infiltration, demyelination, axonal damage in the spinal cord, and brain inflammation. It also includes measuring neurofilament light in mouse serum, which indicates the extent of CNS injury.

This comprehensive protocol provides a more detailed characterization of EAE, than using only one marker.