RRMS patients with high serum IL-17A levels do not respond well to IFN-β therapy and have shorter MS duration compared to patients with low IL-17A levels. This response is not influenced by the presence of BAbs.

Introduction:There are rare reports of the occurrence of acute transverse myelitis and Guillain-Barré syndrome after various surgical procedures and general/epidural anaesthesia. The concomitant occurrence of these pathologies is very rare and is called Guillain-Barré and acute transverse myelitis overlap syndrome. In this article, we present the case of a second trimester pregnant patient who developed Guillain-Barré and acute transverse myelitis overlap syndrome. Case presentation: We report the case of a 16-year-old female patient who underwent a therapeutic termination of pregnancy two weeks prior to the onset of the disease with gradual development of a motor deficit with walking and sensitivity disorders, fecal incontinence. The diagnosis was based on clinical exam, electroneurography and spinal magnetic resonance imaging. Endocrinopathies, infectious diseases, autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, neoplastic diseases and vitamin deficiencies were ruled out. Our patient attended five sessions of therapeutic plasma exchange, followed by steroid treatment, intravenous immunoglobulin with minimum recovery of the motor deficit in the upper limbs, but without significant evolution of the motor deficit in the lower limbs. The patient was discharged on maintenance corticotherapy and immunosuppressive treatment with azathioprine. Conclusions: We report a very rare association between Guillain-Barré syndrome and acute transverse myelitis triggered by a surgical intervention with general anaesthesia. The overlap of Guillain-Barré syndrome and acute transverse myelitis makes the prognosis for recovery worse, and further studies are needed to establish the first-line therapy in these cases.

In evaluating the mode of action of NAT, it is important to determine the value of each cytokine, the Th17/Treg shift and the cytokine signature. NAT significantly decreased peripheral serum levels of some pro-inflammatory cytokines as a novel mechanism of action. IL-17F, sCD40L and IL-31 were the best biomarkers to assess the effectiveness of NAT.

Depression remains an underdiagnosed comorbidity which significantly decreases the quality of life in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients. We aimed to investigate the prevalence of depression in a cohort of ALS patients with more than one year of disease evolution. A total of 50 ALS patients were evaluated with the Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II) and cognition, using the Mini-Cog Standardized Instrument (MCSI). The clinical disability was evaluated using the ALS Functional Rating Scale (ALSFRS). The prevalence of depression was 42.8%. A lower BDI-II score was significantly correlated with a higher education level, the spouse as a caregiver, spiritual devotion, and employment status (p < 0.05). A multiple linear regression analysis between the BDI-II score as the dependent variable and various independent variables such as spirituality, caregiver status, educational level, and occupational status revealed that only the type of caregiver (spouse or parent/child) significantly affected the BDI-II total score (p = 0.006). The functional disability significantly correlated with loss of appetite and loss of libido (p < 0.001). A high education, spiritual devotion, high ALSFRS, and the presence of the spouse as the caregiver were associated with the absence of depression.