El papel de la Galectina 1 en la patogenia de las enfermedades inflamatorias Mediadas por mecanismos inmunes y su posible función como biomarcador

Resum

Immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMID) are a broad group of clinically diverse diseases that share the involvement of the immune system in their etiopathogenesis and inflammation as their primary pathogenic mechanism. IMID include diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, spondyloarthritis, psoriasis, inflammatory bowel disease and systemic lupus erythematosus, among others. At disease onset, these diseases may start with similar clinical features, although with different evolution and response to treatment. Therefore, the search for new biomarkers is important to differentiate between these pathologies at early stages to choose the best therapeutic strategy for each different patient. Galectins are a family of lectins with a fundamental role in the regulation of the immune system, for this reason they have been proposed as attractive therapeutic targets and potential biomarkers in these pathologies. In this sense, both Galectin 1 (Gal1) and Galectin (Gal9), proteins with negative immunoregulatory functions, have been implicated in the appearance and development of IMID. The hypothesis of this work is that Gal1 levels are useful for the diagnosis and/or prognosis of IMID. The results have validated that Gal1 levels act as a diagnostic biomarker in early arthritis and allow us to differentiate between arthritis and spondyloarthritis. In another study with samples of patients with IMID from other centres, it has been shown that the combined use of Galectin 1 and 9 plasma levels is useful in early stages of these pathologies for a better classification. Finally, genetic variants in the LGALS1 gene have been studied, finding three polymorphisms that explain the heterogeneity of Gal1 serum levels in patients with early arthritis