Literature review: use of infrared spectroscopy and multiple sclerosis

Abstract

Introduction: The field of study known as biospectroscopy employs vibrational spectroscopy techniques in the infrared (IR) region to investigate biological problems. IR spectroscopy has been proposed as a new tool for disease screening with complex diagnoses, such as multiple sclerosis (MS), through the analysis of biofluids and machine learning methods. In the literature, there are scientific articles that have built MS detection models using this technique with different approaches. MS is a chronic, neurodegenerative, and autoimmune disease that primarily affects the central nervous system.  Objective: To perform a bibliometric analysis of articles on MS screening using MIR spectroscopy. Methodology: English-language articles that built diagnostic models for MS using MIR spectroscopy were used. The search was conducted using the keywords “multiple sclerosis” AND “infrared spectroscop*” in the PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus databases, from the indexing of the first article until May 2025. Results: Six articles were included in this review. The selected studies used different methodologies to construct classification models for MS. The most used biofluid was blood, and the most frequently used spectral region was 1500–600 cm⁻¹, known as the fingerprint region. In addition, it was noted that the sample size used in the studies was small. Conclusion: MIR spectroscopy combined with multivariate analysis and machine learning has proven to be a promising tool for multiple sclerosis screening. However, the lack of methodological standardization limits its clinical application.