Blood RNA biomarkers for spinal cord injury

Biomarkers of spinal cord injury (SCI) could help determine the severity of the injury and facilitate early critical care decision making. We analyzed global gene expression in peripheral white blood cells during the acute injury phase and identified 197 genes whose expression changed after SCI compared to healthy and trauma controls and in direct relation to SCI severity. Unsupervised co-expression network analysis identified several gene modules that predicted injury severity (AIS grades) with an overall accuracy of 72.7% and included signatures of immune cell subtypes. Specifically, for complete SCIs (AIS ‘A’) ROC analysis showed impressive specificity and sensitivity (AUC: 0.865). Similar precision was also shown for AIS ‘D’ SCIs (AUC: 0.938). Our findings indicate that global transcriptomic changes in peripheral blood cells have diagnostic and potentially prognostic value for SCI severity. There are 58 sequenced samples in total. 10 are from healthy individuals without history of CNS pathology (HC), 10 are non-CNS trauma patients (TC), and 38 are from individuals who suffered a traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI).