Genetics of multiple sclerosis today

Resumo

Multiple sclerosis is a common multifactorial disease in which the etiology of the interaction between external factors and structural specificities of a large number of genes plays an important role. Identification of the risk factors for multiple sclerosis and the development of an integrated pathogenesis model is a challenging task for neurology. The goal of the current review is to describe current approaches to studying the genetics of multifactorial diseases on the whole and multiple sclerosis in particular. Basic approaches to the design of the genetic epidemiological studies are described. Towards this end we discuss the gene candidate and the whole-genome methods of studying genetic associations, the statistical approaches used to combine the diverse data, namely, meta-analysis of the results of different studies, analysis of the association with groups of functionally related genes, and comparison of the genetic bases of the diseases with similar pathogenesis.