01 Jun Blood Biomarker Ubiquitin Elevated In Traumatic Brain Injury
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Yuyuan Li, PhD
Liaoning Provincial Key Laboratory of Brain Diseases
Institute for Brain Disorders, Dalian Medical University
College of Basic Medical Sciences, Dalian Medical University
Dalian China
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Li: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) will become the leading cause of death and lifelong disability in the general population by the year 2020. Early determination of prognosis based on epidemiological data is the key to inform care of these patients. Neurobiochemical markers, like Ubiquitin C-terminal Hydrolase-L1 (UCH-L1) have shown a prognostic value for outcome prediction. Recently, several studies have investigated the correlation between serum UCH-L1 concentrations and TBI, however the results thus far have been inconsistent. In the present study, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the prognostic value of serum UCH-L1 concentrations after traumatic brain injury. Five studies (including 673 TBI and 1004 controls) were included in the meta-analysis and the overall results reveal that the serum UCH-L1 level was significantly higher in patients with traumatic brain injury compared to those of the control group. Importantly, there was no statistical evidence of a publication bias among the contributing studies from the result of Egger’s test either.
Medical Research: What should clinicians and patients take away from your report?
Dr. Li: Elevated UCH-L1 serum levels might be negatively correlated with traumatic brain injury. This suggests that UCH-L1 serum levels might be closely associated with the progression of traumatic brain injury and could be a useful biomarker for the diagnosis and prognosis of TBI. However, more complementary researches may be required to confirm our results due to the limitations of this study. Additionally, no single predictor of outcome should be used alone to decide on therapies for an individual patient; there must always be a series of parameters taken into account.
Medical Research: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?
Dr. Li: Future research should further investigate the relationship between UCH-L1 levels and severity of injury and prognosis, which may help to improve traumatic brain injury diagnosis and outcome prediction. Besides, the biomarker value against other measures of injury severity such as duration of coma and duration of posttraumatic amnesia should also be assessed in the future studies.
Citation:
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Yuyuan Li, PhD, Liaoning Provincial Key Laboratory of Brain Diseases, Institute for Brain Disorders, Dalian Medical University, College of Basic Medical Sciences, Dalian Medical University, & Dalian China (2015). Blood Biomarker Ubiquitin Elevated In Traumatic Brain Injury MedicalResearch.com
Last Updated on June 2, 2015 by Marie Benz MD FAAD