ArticleFrontiers in immunology2026
Characteristics of serum Metrnl levels in patients with neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder and their associations with disease activity and inflammatory biomarkers.
Article in Frontiers in immunology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
Background: Neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD) is a severe autoimmune inflammatory disease for which reliable biomarkers of disease activity are lacking. Meteorin-like protein (Metrnl) has not been investigated in NMOSD; this study assessed its clinical significance in NMOSD patients. Methods: Serum Metrnl, interleukin (IL)-6, and IL-17A levels were quantified by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in 50 patients with NMOSD and 30 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs) and correlated with clinical and laboratory data. Metrnl levels were also remeasured in 30 patients before and after high-dose methylprednisolone therapy, together with derived inflammatory indices. Benjamini-Hochberg false-discovery-rate (FDR) correction was applied within prespecified test families, with a sensitivity power analysis. Metrnl alone and a combined multimarker logistic regression model were evaluated by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, DeLong tests, bootstrap validation, calibration, and decision curve analysis. Results: Serum Metrnl levels were higher in NMOSD patients than in HCs and were greater in those with mild disability than in those with moderate-to-severe disability (both Conclusions: Serum Metrnl levels were elevated in patients with NMOSD, inversely related to disease severity and inflammatory biomarkers, and decreased after immunotherapy, supporting it as a dynamic biomarker of disease activity and a component of a multimarker diagnostic panel. The cross-sectional design precludes causal inference, and exploratory subgroup findings require external validation.
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