[Protein biomarkers in experimental models and in clinical care of traumatic brain injury]

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury is the leading cause of mortality in Hungary in the population under 40 years of age. In Western societies, like the United Sates, traumatic brain injury represents an extreme social-economic burden, expected to become the third leading cause of mortality until 2020. Despite its' epidemiological significance, experimental therapeutic modalities developed in the last few decades did not prove efficient in the clinical care of severe traumatic brain injury. The reason for such a lack of success in terms of translating experimental results to clinical treatment at least partially could be explained by the paucity and the low sensitivity and specificity of clinical parameters endowing us to monitor the efficacy of the therapy. The drive for finding clinical parameters and monitoring tools that enable us to monitor treatment efficacy as well as outcome focused recent attention on biomarkers (and) surrogate markers that are based on rational pathological processes associated with/operant in traumatic brain injury. This review summarizes those biomarkers that could purportedly be used to monitor the treatment of the severely head injured while also providing information on salvageability facilitating the conduction of more rationally designed clinical studies.