Peripheral white blood cell responses as emerging biomarkers for patient stratification and prognosis in acute spinal cord injury

Acute traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating neurological condition, typically resulting in severe long-term physical disability and a drastically reduced overall quality of life; an estimated 27 million people are believed to be presently living with the consequences of SCI globally Effective prognostication after acute SCI would benefit from integrating an assessment of pathophysiological changes on a systemic level, and with that, extend from a lesion-centric approach. Clinical trials in acute SCI are hampered by limited prognostication methods.

• 1
  Significantly elevated neutrophil numbers in the blood of patients with an acute traumatic SCI and the likelihood of little to no functional improvement at hospital discharge.
• 2
  Patients presenting with an isolated SCI and clinical lymphopenia during the first 3 days postaccident were more likely to have a substantial improvement in their neurological status (i.e. AIS grade conversion) during their hospital stay
• 3
  Patients with SCIs have divergent gene expression profiles, not only from healthy controls but also nonneurological trauma, with nearly 200 differentially expressed genes; these genes were also associated with SCI severity.