Quinn Tate, MD
Assistant Professor
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Frances S. Shofer, PhD
Adjunct Professor of Emergency Medicine
Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Timothy R. Dillingham, MD, MS
Professor and Chair
Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Yejia Zhang, MD
Associate Professor
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Low back pain is a common clinical problem. Although imaging studies are widely used to evaluate back pain, the link between low back pain and intervertebral disc degeneration on images is unclear. This study aims to discover novel biomarkers in patients with severe back pain prior to spine surgeries.
Design: Levels of 1512 serum proteins from 29 patients with back pain and 11 healthy controls were compared.
Results:
Biomarkers identified include molecules known to correlate with back pain and novel molecules. Performance of the biomarkers by area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve method confirmed the sensitivity and specificity of some biomarkers. Leukocyte proliferation pathway was overrepresented in upregulated biomarkers, and collagen-containing extracellular matrix was the most enriched among downregulated markers.
Conclusions:
Some biomarkers have been shown to have potential diagnostic value in the past. In this study, biomarkers previously undescribed have been identified by screening many serum proteins with a novel proteomic approach in the serum of patients with severe low back pain. Future work includes confirming these differences in an independent, larger case-controlled study cohort, expanding the number of proteins, and completing a confirmative, quantitative assay for key markers.
