Evaluation of Discriminating Power of Two Biomarkers (Protein S100B/Copeptin) in the Evaluation of Cerebral Lesions Due to Head Injuries in Infants and Children

Head injury is a frequent motive of consultation in paediatric emergency units and the first cause of mortality in infants of more than one year old in developped countries. The indication of performing cerebral CT scans currently depends on clinical decision based on recommendations used in adults. In this way, 60 to 90% of scans are normal in children with head injury. CT scan is expensive and irradiating with the risk of increasing the cancer in children. Protein S100B and copeptin are biomarkers which have shown their ability to detect cerebral lesion in children with head injury. (protein S100B and /or in adults protein S100B and copetin).

It is the first clinical biological evaluation of severity of head injury based on dosing of copeptin alone or associated with protein S100B.

Furthermore, the evaluation of the biomarkers GFAP, NFL, Tau and UCH-L1 is today necessary from a scientific point of view and to optimize the diagnostic and prognostic value of these biomarkers which can be combined. Indeed, these protein biomarkers are biologically linked to the protein S100B and copeptin, and will allow a more specific and more thorough evaluation of the presence of brain damage at the cellular level. More specifically, the measurement of the S-100B and GFAP proteins will allow evaluation of gliovascular damage while those of copeptin, NFL, Tau and UCH-L1 proteins will allow evaluation of neuronal damage. The assay of these different biomarkers will also be carried out on a control population, without head injury or neurological or inflammatory pathologies, in order to establish the standards of these biomarkers on a pediatric population of similar age.