Serum Neurofilament as a measure of early nerve damage

Disanto G, Adiutori R, Dobson R, Martinelli V, Dalla Costa G, Runia T, Evdoshenko E, Thouvenot E, Trojano M, Norgren N, Teunissen C, Kappos L, Giovannoni G, Kuhle J; on behalf of the International Clinically Isolated Syndrome Study Group. Serum neurofilament light chain levels are increased in patients with a clinically isolated syndrome.J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 2015 Feb 25. pii: jnnp-2014-309690. doi: 10.1136/jnnp-2014-309690. [Epub ahead of print]

BACKGROUND:Neurofilament light chain (NfL) represents a promising biomarker for axonal injury. We present the first exploratory study on serum NfL in patients with a clinically isolated syndrome (CIS) and healthy controls.
METHODS: We investigated serum NfL levels in 100 patients with CIS with a short conversion interval to clinically definite multiple sclerosis (MS) (fast converters (FC), median (IQR) conversion time: 110 days (79-139)); 98 patients with non-converting CIS (non-converters (NC), follow-up: 6.5 years (5.3-7.9)); and 92 healthy controls.
RESULTS: NfL levels were higher in FC (24.1 pg/mL (13.5-51.8)) and NC (19.3 pg/mL (13.6-35.2)) than in healthy controls (7.9 pg/mL (5.6-17.2)) (OR=5.85; 95% CI 2.63 to 13.02; p=1.5×10-5 and OR=7.03; 95% CI 2.85 to 17.34; p=2.3×10-5, respectively). When grouping FC and NC, increased serum NfL concentration was also associated with increasing numbers of T2 hyperintense MRI lesions (OR=2.36; 95% CI 1.21 to 4.59; p=0.011), gadolinium-enhancing lesions (OR=2.69; 95% CI 1.13 to 6.41; p=0.026) and higher disability scores (OR=2.54; 95% CI 1.21 to 5.31; p=0.013) at CIS diagnosis.
CONCLUSIONS: If replicated in future studies, serum NfL may represent a reliable and easily accessible biomarker of early axonal damage in CIS and MS.

This study indicates that if you have high levels of neurofilament in the blood when you present with CIS, then you have a higher risk of MS. Likewise, we showed this in the beasties that`had active inflammation causing neurodegeneration also had neurofilament in the blood. The fast convertors had more evidence f nerve damge you don't 

CoI This work of TeamG

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