CSF phosphorylated neurofilament subunit NF-H (pNF-H) levels are biomarkers of Spinal Cord Injury

Abstract

Several studies showed that the phosphorylated form of the neurofilament subunit NF-H (pNF-H) are related to neuronal injuries and its detection provide information about the presence and degree of neuronal loss. Neurofilaments are three subunits, namely NF-L, NF-M and NF-H. The phosphorylated neurofilament subunit NF-H (pNF-H) is present into serum and CSF in significant amounts following neuronal injury and may be detected. The pNF-H can be a biomarker of the neuronal injuries and its detection allows the monitoring neuronal pathology and may provide diagnosis and prognosis in humans. We are interested in pNF-H as biomarker of neuronal injury in spinal cord injury and we used a pNF-H ELISA test capable of detecting the levels of phosphorylated NF-H (pNF-H) to patients with spinal cord injury. We studied the pNF-H levels in CSF in two patients with spinal cord injury (SCI) and for normal values of pNF-H we determined the CSF pNF-H level from individuals without neurological damage. The pNF-H values of CSF from the two patients with SCI were 5-10 times higher than the normal and its higher values were related to an unfavorable outcome. In conclusion, although the number of cases is very low - only two, in the context of experimental studies in animals with SCI, we can say that pNF-H is marker in SCI in humans and its increased values are consistent with an unfavorable outcome.

Phosphorylated neurofilament heavy: A potential blood biomarker to evaluate the severity of acute spinal cord injuries in adults

“…We cannot compare our results with above study as this was conducted on animal model. Although we conducted our study on serum samples, we find support in our conclusions from St. Iencean et al .,[ 16 ] who in their study on two cases with cervical spine injury (tetraplegia) studied PNF-H levels on CSF samples and concluded that its increased levels in CSF samples are consistent with an unfavorable outcome. Ungureanu et al .…”