Development of High Performance Isotope Labeling LC-MS Method for Parallel Metabolomic Screening of Cerebrospinal Fluid and Serum in Spinal Cord Injury

摘要

Acute spinal cord injury (SCI) often causes severe paralysis and disability, for which there are no current treatments. Clinical assessment of SCI relies on functional measures of neurologic impairment, which are inherently imprecise and often impossible to assess in the acute setting. Clearly, there is an urge to identify biomarkers that can accurately classify injury severity and predict neurologic outcome, to facilitate clinical evaluation and treatment. Profound metabolic disturbances have been reported in animal SCI models. Here we demonstrate, for the first time, parallel analysis of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and serum samples from human patients for discovery of SCI biomarkers through metabolomic profiling by high-performance chemical isotope labeling LC-MS.