Plasma Erythropoietin, IL-17A, and IFNγ as Potential Biomarkers of Motor Function Recovery in a Canine Model of Spinal Cord Injury

Traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating Neurological Disease for which an accurate, cost-effective prediction of motor function recovery is in pressing need. A plethora of neurochemical changes involved in the pathophysiological process of SCI may serve as a new source of biomarkers for patient outcomes. Five dogs were included in this study. We characterized the plasma cytokine profiles in acute phase (0, 1, and 3 days after SCI) and subacute phase (7, 14, and 21 days after SCI) with microarray analysis. The motor function recovery following SCI was monitored by Olby scores. The expression level of differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) was measured with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Then, correlations with the Olby scores and receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analysis were performed. We identified 12 DEPs including 10 pro-inflammatory and 2 anti-inflammatory cytokines during the 21-day study period. Among those, the expression levels of erythropoietin (EPO), IL-17A, and IFNγ significantly correlated with the Olby scores with R² values of 0.870, 0.740, and 0.616, respectively. The results of the ROC analysis suggested that plasma EPO, IL-17A, and IFNγ exhibited a significant predictive power with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.656, 0.848, and 0.800 for EPO, IL-17A, and IFNγ, respectively. Our results provide a longitudinal description of the changes in plasma cytokine expression in the acute and subacute stages of canine SCI. These data reveal novel panels of inflammation-related cytokines which have the potential to be evaluated as biomarkers for predicting motor function prognosis after SCI.

Biomarkers; Inflammatory cytokines; Motor function; Plasma; Spinal cord injury.