Diagnosisy: Nerve silk light chain as biomarker of traumatic brain injury

Recently, a study published in the journal Neurology, which aims to determine whether serum neurofilament light chain (NfL) is associated with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) NfL, TBIdiagnosis, damage severity, brain volume and diffuse tensor imaging (DTI) estimates of traumatic axial cable injury (TAI)researchers conducted prospective studies in Sweden and the United States between 2011 and 2019The Swedish queue included 45 hockey players who were sampled for acute concussion (AC) over six days, 31 recurrent concussions (RCS) with persistent post-concussion symptoms (PCS), assessed by paired CSF and serum (moderate, 1.3 years after concussion), 28 pre-season controls and 14 non-athlete controlsThe second team of the study included 230 clinical-based participants (162 TBI and 68 controls)TBI patients were also evaluated for serum, functional outcomes and imaging at 30 days (n-30), 90 days (n-48) and 180 days (n-59) and 1 year after injury (n-84), 2 years (n-57), 3 years (n-46), 4 years (n-38) and 5 years (n-29)In athletes with a paired sample, CSF is associated with serum NfL (r-0.71, p-0.0001)CSF and serum NfL distinguish PCS for 1 year from PCS for 1 year (0.81 and 0.80 under the subject's operating characteristic curve (AUROC), respectivelyThe 1-year PCS vspre-season auROC is 0.97In clinical-based cohort studies, NfL can distinguish between mild, moderate, and severe TBI patients (p.001 and p-0.048)Serum NfL decreased over a five-year period (-0.09 log pg/mL, p 0.0001), but still increased significantly compared to the control groupSerum NfL is associated with functional prognosis, MRI brain atrophy and estimates of TAI through DTI, serum NfL is expected to be used as a biomarker for acute and sports-related concussions as well as subacute and chronic TBI patients