Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory disease characterized
by damage to the myelin sheath surrounding axons in the central nervous
system. While the exact mechanism of this destruction is unknown,
excess nitric oxide (NO) and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) have been
measured in tissues and fluids obtained from people with MS. Here,
incubation of interferon-beta (IFN-β), an MS drug with an unknown
mechanism of action, with red blood cells (RBCs) obtained from people
with MS provide evidence of a potential hypermetabolic state in the
MS RBC that is decreased with IFN-β intervention. Specifically,
binding of all three components of an albumin/C-peptide/Zn2+ complex to MS RBCs was significantly increased in comparison to
control RBCs. For example, the binding of C-peptide to MS RBCs was
significantly increased (3.4 ± 0.1 nM) compared to control RBCs
(1.6 ± 0.2 nM). However, C-peptide binding to MS RBCs was reduced
to a value (1.6 ± 0.3 nM) statistically equal to that of control
RBCs in the presence of 2 nM IFN-β. Similar trends were measured
for albumin and Zn2+ binding to RBCs when in the presence
of IFN-β. RBC function was also affected by incubation of cells
with IFN-β. Specifically, RBC-derived ATP and measurable membrane
GLUT1 were both significantly decreased (56 and 24%, respectively)
in the presence of IFN-β. Collectively, our results suggest
that IFN-β inhibits albumin binding to the RBC, thereby reducing
its ability to deliver ligands such as C-peptide and Zn2+ to the cell and normalizing the basal hypermetabolic state.