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.

中文翻译：

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血浆促红细胞生成素、IL-17A 和 IFNγ 作为脊髓损伤犬模型中运动功能恢复的潜在生物标志物。

创伤性脊髓损伤 (SCI) 是一种破坏性神经系统疾病，迫切需要对运动功能恢复进行准确、具有成本效益的预测。SCI 的病理生理过程中涉及的大量神经化学变化可作为患者预后的生物标志物的新来源。该研究包括五只狗。我们通过微阵列分析表征了急性期（SCI 后 0、1 和 3 天）和亚急性期（SCI 后 7、14 和 21 天）的血浆细胞因子谱。脊髓损伤后的运动功能恢复由 Olby 评分监测。用酶联免疫吸附试验（ELISA）测量差异表达蛋白（DEPs）的表达水平。然后，进行与 Olby 评分和受试者工作特征曲线 (ROC) 分析的相关性。在为期 21 天的研究期间，我们确定了 12 种 DEP，包括 10 种促炎细胞因子和 2 种抗炎细胞因子。其中，促红细胞生成素（EPO）、IL-17A和IFNγ的表达水平与Olby评分显着相关，R2值分别为0.870、0.740和0.616。ROC 分析结果表明血浆 EPO、IL-17A 和 IFNγ 表现出显着的预测能力，EPO、IL-17A 和 IFNγ 的曲线下面积 (AUC) 分别为 0.656、0.848 和 0.800。我们的结果提供了对犬 SCI 急性和亚急性期血浆细胞因子表达变化的纵向描述。这些数据揭示了新的炎症相关细胞因子组，它们有可能被评估为预测 SCI 后运动功能预后的生物标志物。