The Effect of Serum from Acute Traumatic Brain or Spinal Cord Injury Patients on the Growth of Human Bone Marrow-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells

Abstract

Background: Accelerated osteogenesis associated with traumatic brain injury TBI or spinal cord injury SCI is inconclusive and its cause remains obscured. The purpose of this study was to ensure a clinical evidence of its presence and to reveal the possible underlying mechanism. Methods: Healing indicators of diaphyseal femoral fractures in 20 patients with TBI and 20 patients with SCI were compared to 20 patients with femoral fracture only. The effect of sera of blood samples withdrawn from these patients on cell count proliferation rate of human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells MSCs (ATCC-USA) were measured and compared to sera from 20 patients with TBI only, 20 patients with SCI only, and a control group. Results: The study showed that femoral fractures with TBI or SCI heal more expectedly, faster with exuberant callus (p<0.0001) and showed statistically significant increased cell count and mean growth rate of MSCs with sera from TBI and SCI patients with or without femoral fractures of 82.34 ± 6.93%, 83.9 ± 8.57%, 81.46 ± 5.37%, 81.5 ± 6.49% versus 52.96 ± 5.11% in the control and 59.77 ± 5.98% in patients with femoral fractures only (p<0.0001). Conclusion: These results suggested enhancement of fracture-healing secondary to TBI and SCI due to the presence of factors in the serum that have a mitogenic effect on MSCs.