Biomarkers in Silent Traumatic Brain Injury

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has been recognized among the leading causes of mortality and morbidity in young adults. Traditionally, the diagnosis of TBI has been based on neuroimaging. However, a significant portion of insulted patients appear to be apparently asymptomatic. As a result, more elaborate indices of silent TBI are required in order to immediately detect focal and diffuse asymptomatic TBI. Such valid indices will potentially increase the efficacy of therapeutic strategies in TBI patients. In this review of the literature, we present novel circulating biomolecules, as potential biomarkers of silent TBI, like neurofilaments, Cleaved-Tau (C-Tau), Microtubule-Associated Protein 2 (MAP2), Neuron-Specific Enolase, S100B and ferritin. In addition to this, assessment of white matter abnormalities and white matter integrity by diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) have emerged as promising sensitive neuroimaging methods of silent TBI. An integrated research is needed to fully understand the interplay between all the aforementioned indices and DTI. The potential diagnostic, therapeutic and prognostic values of the all aforementioned indices will be analyzed in the proposed review.