Autoantibodies in spinal cord injury

Currently, autoantibodies against 24 different antigens have been shown to increase in patients with spinal cord injury. Evidence show that the increased autoantibodies are, at least in the acute and subacute phases, natural antibodies, i.e., autoantibodies naturally occurring in healthy subjects directed against modified or degraded proteins. Among the targets, some of them are associated to be selectively expressed in the central nervous system but others are also expressed systemically. While IgG and IgM autoantibodies have been described to be pathogenic in mice with spinal cord injury, it has not been still demonstrated that the autoantibodies that increase after human spinal cord injury are pathogenic. Some of these autoantibodies are known contributors to pathology in other neurological diseases, but due to their origin as natural autoantibodies, an additional potential beneficial role should not be discarded. In this chapter, we review the current knowledge about the origin, the specificities, and the potential roles of the autoantibodies that increase after spinal cord injury in humans.