The Research for New Clinical Diagnostic Strategy of Specific Biomarkers for Traumatic Brain Injury

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the most common type of nerve injury and it severely endangers the public health. It is necessary to accurately measure the early neurological function of brain injury for monitoring its prognosis and therapeutic interventions. Glasgow Coma Score (GCS) and Computed Tomography (CT) are often used to diagnose the severity of TBI. However, GCS has its drawbacks in the observation of prognosis, because it is interfered by analgesics, sedatives and relaxants in the evaluation of neurological function. CT may miss the diagnosis of diffuse axonal injury (DAI) and the monitoring of intracranial pressure (ICP). Secondary injuries after TBI, such as oxidative stress, inflammatory damage, and abnormal metabolism, can destroy cerebral blood vessels and structures, which also affect the diagnosis of injury. Therefore, there is an urgent need for new methods to quickly identify which patients are likely to suffer brain injury or even cause persistent disability. Detection of brain injury biomarkers based on blood and brain tissue has long been used to assess the severity of TBI, but no biomarkers have been found for early diagnosis of mTBI and prognosis of different degrees of brain injury. Protein and metabolic product differences were detected from blood or the lesion samples of normal population, patients with traumatic brain injury and/or non-brain injury using mass spectrometry proteomics and metabolomics analysis platform, and diagnostic markers of potential traumatic brain injury were found, and their differential and diagnostic values were discussed.