Biomarkers in Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury

Abstract

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is one of the most devastating traumas for an individual because the complete traumatic spinal cord injury leads to paraplegia or tetraplegia. The mechanical injuries directly cause axonal destruction in fiber tracts, destruction of the neurons, and of the glial cells, and their destruction releases substances whose pres‐ ence, quantity, and dynamics can be lesional biomarkers. The reactions of partially injured cells simultaneously start and the occurring substances and their quantity may be reaction biomarkers. The lesional biomarkers appear immediately post injury and after several hours there are both lesional biomarkers and reaction biomarkers. In recent years, a number of protein biomarkers have been evaluated to detect neuronal injury and recently there have been studies about their potential diagnostic and predictive value for spinal cord injuries. The most important lesional biomarkers are the phos‐ phorylated neurofilament subunits resulting from the axonal neurofilament destruc‐ tion. The heavy phosphorylated neurofilament subunit (pNF-H) is a predictive lesional biomarker because its values pattern can show the reducing or stopping of the secon‐ dary lesions and the favorable outcome. The complete SCI patients with a favorable development had a specific pattern of daily values of pNF-H: a sudden increase up to a maximum value then a progressive decrease to normal. The patients with unfavorable outcome or neurological stabilization had two patterns: an increase to a plateau of pNFH values or a progressive increase up to a peak followed by a progressive decrease to quasi-normal values.