Abstract

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a highly heterogeneous demyelinating disease of the central nervous system (CNS) that needs for reliable biomarkers to foresee disease severity. Previous retrospective investigations in the MS model, experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), highlighted the important relationship between monocytic-myeloid-derived suppressor cells (M-MDSCs) and the experimented severity of the clinical course. In this work, we show for the first time cells resembling M-MDSCs associated to MS lesions, whose abundance was related to milder MS clinical courses. Moreover, Ly-6Chi cells (which are indistinguishable from circulating M-MDSCs in mice) are useful biomarkers to predict a milder severity of the EAE disease course and a lesser tissue damage extent. Finally, the abundance of M-MDSCs in blood from untreated MS patients at their first relapse was inversely correlated with EDSS at baseline and relapse recovery one-year later. In summary, our data point to M-MDSC load as a promising biomarker of patients clinical course severity. TeaserThe abundance of myeloid-derived suppressor cells is related to a milder clinical course in multiple sclerosis patients.