Biochemical Markers of Brain Injury: Applications to Combat Casualty Care
Abstract
Brain injury resulting from traumatic, ischemic and/or chemical etiology is a significant international health concern, representing a potentially catastrophic debilitating medical emergency with poor prognosis for long-term disability. There are currently no approved drug treatments for traumatic or ischemic brain injury. There have been a large number of clinical trials studying potential therapies for traumatic brain injury (TBI) that have resulted in negative findings with a cost of over $200 million. Many investigators have pointed out that the absence of biochemical markers of injury could have contributed to these failures. Unlike other organ-based diseases where rapid diagnosis employing biomarkers (usually involving blood tests) prove invaluable to guide treatment of the disease, no such rapid, definitive diagnostic tests exist for traumatic or ischemic brain injury to provide physicians with quantifiable neurochemical markers to help determine the seriousness of the injury, the anatomical and cellular pathology of the injury, and to guide implementation of appropriate triage and medical management. We propose that cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) protease-specific breakdown products (SBDP) levels are a novel and promising biomarker of TBI. Studies to date have demonstrated CSF levels of SBDP have three properties of a good biomarker: 1) association with injury magnitude, 2) reflection of pathophysiology in the brain, 3) significant contribution to prediction of outcome as measured by lesion size. Not only do these studies strongly support the utility of CSF SBDP as a biomarker of acute neuronal injury, they provide further evidence of the relationship between injury magnitude and biochemical outcome measures. This study is also the first rigorous preclinical evaluation of a biomarker of acute neurological injury.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2004
- Accession Number
- ADA445085
Entities
People
- Frank C. Tortella
- Jitendra R. Dave
- Kevin K W Wang
- Ronald L. Hayes
- X. M. Lu
Organizations
- University of Florida