Advances in Biomarker Sciences and Technology (Jan 2023)

Diagnostic performance of point-of-care ubiquitin carboxy-terminal Hydrolase-L1 assay in distinguishing imaging abnormalities in traumatic brain injury: A TRACK-TBI cohort study

  • Kevin K. Wang,
  • Jennifer C. Munoz-Pareja,
  • Lauren A. Lautenslager,
  • J. Adrian Tyndall,
  • Zhihui Yang,
  • Maria R. Kerrigan,
  • Ramon Diaz-Arrastia,
  • Frederick K. Korley,
  • David Okonkwo,
  • Ava M. Puccio,
  • John K. Yue,
  • Sabrina R. Taylor,
  • Pratik Mukherjee,
  • Esther L. Yuh,
  • Nancy R. Temkin,
  • Claudia S. Robertson,
  • Xiaoying Sun,
  • Sonia Jain,
  • Amy J. Markowitz,
  • Geoffrey T. Manley,
  • Opeolu Adeoye,
  • Neeraj Badjatia,
  • Kim Boase,
  • Yelena Bodien,
  • M. Ross Bullock,
  • Randall Chesnut,
  • John D. Corrigan,
  • Karen Crawford,
  • Sureyya Dikmen,
  • Ann-Christine Duhaime,
  • Richard Ellenbogen,
  • V Ramana Feeser,
  • Adam R. Ferguson,
  • Brandon Foreman,
  • Raquel Gardner,
  • Etienne Gaudette,
  • Joseph Giacino,
  • Luis Gonzalez,
  • Shankar Gopinath,
  • Rao Gullapalli,
  • J Claude Hemphill,
  • Gillian Hotz,
  • Joel Kramer,
  • Natalie Kreitzer,
  • Harvey Levin,
  • Chris Lindsell,
  • Joan Machamer,
  • Christopher Madden,
  • Alastair Martin,
  • Thomas McAllister,
  • Michael McCrea,
  • Randall Merchant,
  • Lindsay Nelson,
  • Laura Ngwenya,
  • Eva Palacios,
  • Daniel Perl,
  • Miri Rabinowitz,
  • Jonathan Rosand,
  • Angelle Sander,
  • Gabriella Satris,
  • David Schnyer,
  • Seth Seabury,
  • Arthur Toga,
  • Alex Valadka,
  • Mary Vassar,
  • Paul Vespa,
  • Ross Zafonte

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 5
pp. 38 – 49

Abstract

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The use of UCH-L1 detection with point-of-care (POC) assay alone has not been characterized for clinical use. This study compares the accuracies of POC UCH-L1 and Neuron-Specific Enolase (NSE) Elecsys® levels for identifying TBI patients with structural abnormalities on neuroimaging.The Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in Traumatic Brain Injury (TRACK-TBI) Phase 1 Cohort, enrolled 1375 TBI patients (GCS 3–15) presenting to one of 18 US Level I trauma centers within 24 h of injury who had an admission head CT; blood samples were collected, along with 122 orthopedic and 209 healthy controls. The TBI cohort consisted of 810 CT-negative (CT-) and 549 CT-positive (CT+) subjects. Of the CT- subjects who had MRIs, 121 were MRI-positive (MRI+) and 333 were MRI-negative (MRI-). UCH-L1 POC showed best diagnostic performance for CT + versus CT-, 0–8 h post-injury with an AUC of 0·779 [0·708–0.850] when compared to the 0–25 h interval, with an AUC of 0.684 [0.655–0.712]. NSE assay has an AUC of 0.695 [0.619–0.770] for the 0–8 h interval and 0.634 [0.603–0.665] for the 0–25 h interval. During the first 8 after injury, POC UCH-L1 outperforms NSE in identifying TBI patients with structural abnormalities on neuroimaging.

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