Identifying Immune Biomarkers Associated with Human Trauma As Potential Therapeutic Targets

Severe trauma can induce systemic immunosuppression, which makes understanding the biomarker profiles of trauma patients critical for therapeutic development and for predicting potential immune responses to treatments such as biomedical implants. Our goal was to establish a data set containing levels of a large array of biomarkers measured in blood from human trauma patients. Multiplex electrochemiluminescence assays were conducted to measure the levels of 59 biomarkers in 1000 blood samples collected from patients at the time of admission to trauma centers. Injury types were categorized as motor vehicle crashes (n=448), falls (n=221), gun wounds (n=78), stabbings (n=117), or other traumatic injuries. Patients ranged in age from 18 to 101, with a mean age of 42.7 for male patients (n= 725) and 49.8 for female patients (n= 272). There were no significant differences in biomarker expression levels between the different injury types. Differences in age distributions of male and female patients for each injury type were not found to be statistically significant, except in the case of falls, which had a higher average age for female patients compared to male patients. MIF, MIP-5, and YKL-40 had the highest expression, with concentrations of 554148 ± 62938 pg/mL, 17409 ± 919 pg/mL, and 98793 ± 10015 pg/mL (mean ± 95 % CI) respectively, at 1:100 dilution. Further experiments are currently being conducted to establish biomarker profiles for control uninjured human samples, and data comparing the profiles of trauma patients and uninjured controls will be presented. Overall, this work provides a resource for understanding immune responses to injury and potentially developing new therapeutics with these biomarker profiles in mind. This work was supported by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering