http://www.medpagetoday.com/Neurology/HeadTrauma/49569?
As public scrutiny surrounding concussion continues to intensify, so too does the search for objective data to diagnose and track improvement following traumatic brain injury (TBI). Blood biomarkers would be an excellent noninvasive solution -- assuming they were a reliable measure of damage, correlated with the severity of damage, improved in concert with clinical recovery, and blood tests to assess the biomarkers were both sensitive and specific. That's a tall order, one which has been the subject of considerable debate over the past few years and has thus far remained elusive.
To date, the literature supporting the utility of blood biomarkers in the detection of brain injury and monitoring of its healing has been promising, though researchers have recognized some of the limitations in interpreting results. The greatest challenge has been detection -- concentrations of biomarkers in the blood are too low for many assays. Other barriers include plasma protein binding, renal or hepatic clearance of biomarkers, proteolysis in the blood, and extracerebral sources of the proteins. However, despite these considerable obstacles, many papers published continue to bolster biomarker backers.
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This week, researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center published a new study
that I believe moves us one step closer to making biomarker measurement
a clinically useful reality. They solved the puzzle of how biomarkers
make their way to the blood -- the so-called glymphatic system.
Blocking the glymphatic system prevented biomarkers from reaching the
blood, thus establishing the glymphatic system as the "primary highway"
by which proteins leaking out of neurons or glial cells after TBI would
reach the blood.More at link.
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