Neuron-SpecificC Enolase as a Diagnostic Biomarker for TBI in Preclinical Trials: A systematic review

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of death and disability among young adults. Thus, discovering a biomarker to assess the severity of TBI is an issue of immense clinical importance. This systematic review aims to evaluate the potential for neuron specific enolase (NSE) to identify TBI in animal studies.

MEDLINE and Pubmed were searched for relevant literature up to January of 2017. Studies were included as part of the review if they included animal species, age, sex, injury severity, injury model, sampling site, number of animals per injury group, at least one outcome measure, and number of time points for recording the biomarker in question. Risk of bias was assessed by the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies tool (QUADAS-2).

3411 citations were screened, of which 20 were considered for final review. NSE was generally found to be a positive predictor for TBI.

In preclinical trial data involving TBI, increased levels of NSE correlate with injury severity. Inconsistent data reporting standards and lack of consistency involving injury model hampered the success of this review; more trials with homogeneous data is required to attain statistical significance.