Introduction
There is increasing evidence that neurodegeneration through axonal damage or dysfunction occurs in the early course of multiple sclerosis (MS) independent of demyelination, and is responsible for irreversible neurological disability.
1,2 In the past few decades, there has been growing interest in developing cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers that reflect axonal loss or damage in the early stages of MS.
3–6 Biomarkers such as neurofilaments, tau, 14–3-3 and
N-acetyl aspartic acid might be helpful to detect and monitor the extent of axonal destruction.
6–8 However, in view of the axonal damage present in the early disease stage that is likely to be preceded by axonal dysfunction, markers that reflect axonal dysfunction are needed. Ultimately, a specific signature from a combination of these CSF axonal damage and dysfunction proteins will pave the way for improved prognostic accuracy in MS and better monitoring of response to therapies.
Contactin-1 and contactin-2 are brain-specific soluble cell adhesion proteins of the contactin family, expressed on the axonal membranes of neurons,
9,10 and are suggested to reflect axonal dysfunction. These two proteins have a similar structure and both interact with a well-known protein involved in axonal damage, i.e. amyloid precursor protein,
11,12 but they differ in their axonal localisation. Contactin-1 is expressed in paranodal axonal domains, whereas contactin-2 is localised in the juxtaparanode.
13,14 These proteins may therefore play different roles in the pathology of MS. Contactin-1 has been reported to be involved in myelin formation in the central nervous system (CNS) by way of axo-glia interaction, the loss of which is one of the main causes of neuronal dysfunction in MS.
15 Indeed, in chronic MS lesions, contactin-1 was highly expressed in demyelinated axons, probably to induce remyelination.
16 Contactin-2 was found to be involved in axonal growth and guidance.
17 It was recently identified as one of the elevated CSF proteins in a proteomics study in paediatric MS patients compared to those with monophasic CNS demyelinating syndrome
18 and in clinically isolated syndrome (CIS) patients versus controls.
19Based on their role in axonal domain organisation,
13,14 we hypothesised that CSF levels of contactin-1 and contactin-2 are altered differently in various MS subtypes and may serve as surrogate markers for early axonal domain dysfunction. Contactin-1 and contactin-2 were measured at baseline in the CSF of patients with different subtypes of MS, as well as in patients with early MS (CIS) that progressed to the diagnosis of clinically definite multiple sclerosis (CDMS) at follow-up. We investigated the relationship of contactin-1 and contactin-2 with axonal damage markers such as neurofilament light (NFL), neurofilament heavy (NFH) and brain atrophy markers at baseline in all MS subtypes as well as with longitudinal change in cortex volume in CIS patients.
Discussion
In this study, we measured the levels of contactin-1 and contactin-2 in CSF, first in CDMS patients, and next in patients with CIS, to evaluate the potential of these proteins as markers for axonal domain dysfunction. Our results suggest that the reduction of CSF levels of both contactin-1 and contactin-2 in RRMS and SPMS reflect the underlying axonal pathology in these disease subtypes. In contrast to definite MS patients, contactin-1 tended to increase in patients with CIS compared to controls. In addition, contactin-2 was the most significant predictor of longitudinal brain atrophy in CIS patients.
Despite the small sample size of our MS cohort, we observed decrements in contactin-1 and contactin-2 levels in RRMS and SPMS compared to controls, which were not found in case of NFL and NFH (
Table 1). Our finding that contactin-1 is reduced in RRMS is in accordance with proteomics studies that found contactin-1 among the proteins that were reduced in the CSF of RRMS patients compared to controls.
27,28 However, our finding of decreased levels in SPMS compared to controls was in contrast to the findings of a proteomics study that found increased contactin-1 levels in SPMS compared to controls.
27,28 This discrepancy could be due to different measurement platforms (proteomics used in previous studies vs. ELISA used in our study) and possibly different epitopes of the antibodies. Moreover, contactin-1 associates with sodium channels and in particular, Nav1.2, enhancing the surface expression of the latter.
29 Diffuse high axonal expression of Nav1.2 has been found in MS plaques.
30 Therefore, by modulating the surface expression of Nav1.2, contactin-1 may contribute to a putative compensatory mechanism to restore axonal function in early MS, which might lead to the decreased release of contactin-1 in the CSF and thus lower levels in MS. Alternatively, some studies
31,32 have shown axonal degeneration and significant reduction of axonal density in SPMS. Similar reduced levels of axonal protein have been observed earlier in SPMS, such as
N-acetyl-aspartate, which supports decreases in axonal biomarkers with disease progression.
33 Based on these previous studies, we hypothesised that significantly lower levels of contactins in SPMS compared to controls could reflect slow axonal degeneration in the progressive phase. Thus, contactin-1 could maybe even be a marker of evolution to a secondary phase. In contrast to RRMS and SPMS, even though not highly significant, slightly higher levels of both contactin-1 and contactin-2 in PPMS might suggest a different mechanism. In a progressive stage such as PPMS, the active process of axonal loss could lead to significantly higher levels of axonal proteins such as tau and MOG in CSF.
34 A similar process might lead to slightly higher levels of contactin-1 and contactin-2 in the CSF of a subset of PPMS patients.
Our finding that contactin-1 tended to increase in CIS is in agreement with a previous proteomics study in which contactin-1 levels were found to be higher in CIS than controls.
35 However, baseline contactin-1 and contactin-2 levels were similar in CIS patients who remained stable and converted to RRMS at the last visit. Slightly higher contactin-1 levels in CIS could be due to acute release during axonal myelin domain dysfunction, or a restorative mechanism.
We next studied the relationship of contactins with neurofilaments (biomarkers for axonal damage), which has not been investigated so far. We found that contactin-1 correlated positively with NFH in CIS, RRMS and SPMS patients. The pattern of alterations of contactin-1 and NFH are similar between various MS subtypes, which possibly explains the observed positive correlations of contactin-1 with NFH (see Supplementary Figure 3). Although the sample size of the PPMS group was small, we found a correlation between contactin-1 and NFH within this group Supplementary Figure 1). In contrast, contactin-1 correlated with NFL only in progressive MS patients, i.e. SPMS and PPMS (r = 0.45, p = 0.004). These results indicate that contactin-1 is related to NFH and NFL differently depending on the disease stage and therefore likely reflects a different extent of axonal damage.
Contactin-1 and contactin-2 did not correlate with brain atrophy markers in CIS and RRMS patients in cross-sectional analyses. However, contactin-1 correlated positively with normalised brain volume in SPMS patients, implying that decreased brain volume or atrophy is reflected by reduced CSF levels of contactin-1. In addition, contactin-1 correlated negatively with the T2 lesion load in SPMS patients, suggesting that reduced contactin-1 levels may be associated with increased lesion load in the progressive disease stage. In CIS patients, contactin-2 was negatively associated with the change in cortex volume during follow-up and was the best predictor of brain atrophy among contactin-1, NFL and NFH. These results indicate the possible use of contactin-2 as a biomarker for monitoring disease progression, as the baseline levels could predict the subsequent cortical volume changes. Larger studies with longer follow-ups must confirm whether the relation of contactin-2 with atrophy is indeed only present in CIS patients and disappears in definite MS. Overall, the correlations of contactins with MRI, which is considered one of the most powerful techniques for the differential diagnosis of MS, further support the idea that contactin levels might also reflect neuronal damage or brain atrophy in MS.
The major strengths of our study were that we used analytically validated commercially available ELISAs for measuring contactin levels, which is an advantage over previous studies involving contactins analysed by proteomics methods. The commercial availability facilitates replication of the findings. In addition, we used a larger sample size compared to previous studies. We included two independent cohorts from two geographical locations, which extended the assessment of suitability of contactin-1 and contactin-2 as markers for axonal domain dysfunction in different stages of MS. Nevertheless, our study has some limitations. First, the control group of cohort 1 was small and heterogeneous. However, the mix of inflammatory and non-inflammatory disease represents a real clinical setting. As not a lot of studies have investigated contactins in MS, our study aimed to explore the levels of contactins in all subtypes of MS as well as in inflammatory and non-inflammatory cases that come to the MS centre. As there is not much information yet on contactin-1 and contactin-2 levels in other neurological diseases, we cannot exclude that they are altered in those diseases. This novel MS biomarker study was exploratory in nature and future large cohort studies are warranted to evaluate the value of contactins as diagnostic/prognostic biomarkers. Second, we were limited to cross-sectional data in the definite MS cohort, which restricted our statistical analysis method to correlations. Third, due to lack of follow-up CSF, the differences in the levels of contactins in CIS patients who converted to CDMS and those patients who remained stable could not be analysed after the follow-up time point. As the CIS and RRMS patients were from different cohorts from two distinct locations, we could not compare contactin-1 and contactin-2 levels or imaging-derived metrics between these two groups directly. Although we found that both contactin-1 and contactin-2 baseline levels were similar in CIS patients converting to CDMS versus CIS patients who remained stable (cohort 2), the sample size was small for a statistically robust comparison. Moreover, IQR for follow-up time in this cohort starts at 1.4 years, which may be insufficient follow-up time for some patients to convert to MS. Future studies should include larger sample sizes for comparisons of CIS converting into CDMS versus stable CIS patients, and should explore the possibility of contactin-1 or contactin-2 to predict conversion to CDMS.
In conclusion, our study provides novel insights about CSF contactin-1 and contactin-2 as surrogate markers for axonal domain dysfunction in different MS subtypes, and indicates that these proteins probably reflect novel aspects of the neuro-axonal degenerative mechanism. Therefore, the addition of contactin-1 and contactin-2 to the panel of biomarkers for monitoring axonal damage might be useful.