Saving the Spine with Serum Cytokines

Despite modern medicine’s rapid advancement, patients’ chances of recovery after spinal cord injury (SCI) are still slim. But this is not just down to the lack of effective treatment – there’s also a need for rapid, reliable diagnostic biomarkers to predict SCI severity and guide clinicians in their treatment decision-making.

A pilot study seekinging to fill this gap has conducted a multiplex analysis of serum cytokines in patients two weeks post-injury – finding a significant increase of IFNγ, CCL27, and CCL26 (1). The researchers also found differences in patients with baseline injury grades A or B (according to the American Spinal Injury Association Impairment Scale) in CXCL5, CCL11, CXCL11, IL10, TNFα, and MIF.

Though the research is early-stage, the findings show potential for using serum cytokines to stratify SCI patients without the risk of complications commonly seen from repeated sampling of cerebrospinal fluid.