MS and the Immune System

Multiple sclerosis is a multifactorial autoimmune disease of the central nervous system with three primary targets of the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves. Based on monozygotic twin studies, the heritability of MS is 25%. Over the last decade of advances in genome wide association studies, 48% of that heritability has now been explained by > 200 MS risk alleles, the majority of which are associated with immune genes. The closest genetic cousins of MS are other autoimmune diseases and not neurodegenerative diseases.