The Effects of Age at Infection and Gender on the Pathogenesis of Theiler’s Virus Induced Disease – A Model of Human Multiple Sclerosis

Abstract

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most common inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system (CNS) affecting 1 in 2000 of the US population. Susceptibility to MS is influenced by environmental, gender, genetic and pathogenic factors. For instance, there is a higher incidence of MS in women than men (2:1) and that there is a sudden onset of the disease between the ages of 15 and 50, suggesting that gender, age and puberty alter the susceptibility to the disease. The etiology of MS is not known, and although viral infection is suspected to be an initiating event. Theiler’s murine encephalomyelitis virus (TMEV) infection in SJL mice causes a biphasic disease in which the chronic phase causes an inflammatory demyelinating disease of the CNS which closely resembles MS. In the current study we utilize TMEV to investigate the influence of both age and gender on disease progression in this viral model of human multiple sclerosis. Here, we tested the hypothesis that age and gender significantly affect the pathogenesis of Theiler’s virus-induced disease in which we showed that males displayed worse symptoms than females at later ages of inoculation.