A Systemic Inflammatory Signature Reflecting Cross Talk Between Innate and Adaptive Immunity Is Associated With Incident Polyneuropathy: KORA F4/FF4 Study

Prospective analyses of biomarkers of inflammation and distal sensorimotor polyneuropathy (DSPN) are scarce and limited to innate immunity. We therefore aimed to assess associations between biomarkers reflecting multiple aspects of immune activation and DSPN. The study was based on 127 case subjects with incident DSPN and 386 noncase subjects from the population-based Cooperative Health Research in the Region of Augsburg (KORA) F4/FF4 cohort (follow-up 6.5 years). Proximity extension assay technology was used to measure serum levels of biomarkers of inflammation. Of 71 biomarkers assessed, 26 were associated with incident DSPN. After adjustment for multiple testing, higher levels of six biomarkers remained related to incident DSPN. Three of these proteins (MCP-3/CCL7, MIG/CXCL9, IP-10/CXCL10) were chemokines, and the other three (DNER, CD40, TNFRSF9) were soluble forms of transmembrane receptors. The chemokines had neurotoxic effects on neuroblastoma cells in vitro. Addition of all six biomarkers improved the C statistic of a clinical risk model from 0.748 to 0.783 ( = 0.011). Pathway analyses indicated that multiple cell types from innate and adaptive immunity are involved in the development of DSPN. We thus identified novel associations between biomarkers of inflammation and incident DSPN pointing to a complex cross talk between innate and adaptive immunity in the pathogenesis of the disease.