The Multiple Sclerosis Research group, Centre for Molecular Medicine, Department of Clinical neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. wangko.lundstrom@ki.se
Recently, several non-HLA loci have been shown to be convincingly associated with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) susceptibility, assumingly indicating important pathways in the pathogenesis. A genotype influence on disease outcome measures by these genes would support a role of these pathways in ongoing tissue damage. Here, however, we report a consistent dissociation between causation and progression for five non-HLA genotypes (IL7R, IL2RA, CLEC16A, CD226 and SH2B3) in 1776 Scandinavian MS patients.