Early CSF Biomarkers and Late Functional Outcomes in Spinal Cord Injury. A Pilot Study

Abstract

Although, biomarkers are regarded as an important tool for monitoring injury severity and treatment efficacy, and for predicting clinical evolution in many neurological diseases and disorders including spinal cord injury, there is still a lack of reliable biomarkers for the assessment of clinical course and patient outcome. In this study, a biological dataset of 60 cytokines/chemokines, growth factorsm and intracellular and extracellular matrix proteins, analyzed in CSF within 24 h of injury, was used for correlation analysis with the clinical dataset of the same patients. A heat map was generated of positive and negative correlations between biomarkers and clinical rating scale scores at discharge, and between biomarkers and changes in clinical scores during the observation period. Using very stringent statistical criteria, we found 10 molecules which correlated with clinical scores at discharge, and five molecules, which correlated with changes in clinical scores. The proposed methodology may be useful for generating hypotheses regarding “predictive” and “treatment effectiveness” biomarkers, thereby suggesting potential candidates for disease-modifying therapies using a “bed-to-bench” approach.

Lesion-induced impairment of therapeutic capacities of olfactory ensheathing cells in an autologous transplantation model for treatment of spinal cord injury

“…For example, SCI is associated with brain inflammation and cognitive deficits, particularly in the olfactory bulbs, cortex, thalamus and hippocampus. Recent studies report that the spread of inflammation is due to the presence of cytokines and immune cells into cerebrospinal fluid after SCI [44].…”

Intra-individual variability in the neuroprotective and promyelinating properties of conditioned culture medium obtained from human adipose mesenchymal stromal cells

“…OGD is an experimental in vitro condition used to mimic hypoxia-ischemic insults, widely used in our lab and supported by cell-based High Content Analysis [ 44 , 45 ]. Testing cells with patient-derived biological fluids has already been used as an approach to predict clinical outcomes [ 46 , 47 ].…”

Peripheral white blood cell responses as emerging biomarkers for patient stratification and prognosis in acute spinal cord injury

“…In addition, there are also impracticalities around inserting indwelling intrathecal catheters and having to sample CSF very acutely from unstable patients for baseline measurements in early intervention trials where treatment typically must be initiated within hours of injury [ 35 , 36 ]; blood contamination may also be an issue. In summary, although candidate CSF protein biomarkers continue to be of interest and certainly hold promise for predicting longer-term patient outcomes [ 37 , 38 ], there is an ongoing pressing need for biomarkers that are derived from routinely collected data that can be easily incorporated into clinical care protocols, particularly so during acute SCI patient management.…”