• Georgene W Hergenroeder, Anthony N Moore, J Philip McCoy, Leigh Samsel, Norman H Ward, Guy L Clifton, and Pramod K Dash.
• The Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, The University of Texas Medical School, Houston, Texas, USA. Georgene.W.Hergenroeder@uth.tmc.edu
• J Neuroinflamm. 2010 Jan 1;7:19.

BackgroundIncreased intracranial pressure (ICP) is a serious, life-threatening, secondary event following traumatic brain injury (TBI). In many cases, ICP rises in a delayed fashion, reaching a maximal level 48-96 hours after the initial insult. While pressure catheters can be implanted to monitor ICP, there is no clinically proven method for determining a patient's risk for developing this pathology.MethodsIn the present study, we employed antibody array and Luminex-based screening methods to interrogate the levels of inflammatory cytokines in the serum of healthy volunteers and in severe TBI patients (GCSResultsConsistent with previous reports, we observed sustained increases in IL-6 levels in TBI patients irrespective of their ICP status. However, the group of patients who subsequently experienced ICP >or= 25 mm Hg had significantly higher IL-6 levels within the first 17 hours of injury as compared to the patients whose ICP remained 128 pg/ml correctly identified 85% of isolated TBI patients who subsequently developed elevated ICP, and values between these cut-off values correctly identified 75% of all patients whose ICP remained ConclusionsOur results suggest that serum IL-6 can be used for the differential diagnosis of elevated ICP in isolated TBI.

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