Author Of 1 Presentation
P0722 - Inter-attack astrocyte damage in NMOSD – does it exist? : Longitudinal analysis of serum GFAP (ID 1618)
Abstract
Background
Information on subclinical astrocyte damage can provide further insight into neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD) pathophysiology and disease-monitoring strategies.
Objectives
To investigate whether astrocyte damage occurs during the inter-attack periods in individuals with NMOSD by longitudinally measurement of serum glial fibrillary acidic protein (sGFAP) at multiple time points.
Methods
sGFAP levels were measured in 187 serum samples from 20 NMOSD patients treated with rituximab (median follow-up: 24 months), and 19 age- and sex-matched healthy controls using a highly sensitive single-molecule array assay. Six NMOSD patients with clinical attacks despite treatment were enrolled for attack-related measurements and the other 14 clinically stable patients were randomly selected from NMOSD cohort of National Cancer Center, Korea.
Results
Significant elevations of sGFAP levels were observed in all clinical attacks, and 95% (19/20) of patients showed reduction of sGFAP levels under the cut-off value (3 standard deviations above the mean concentration of age- and sex-matched healthy controls) within 3 months of their clinical attacks. The sGFAP levels were consistently low during inter-attack periods in 90% (17/19) of patients, whose sGFAP levels once returned to below the cut-off value.
Conclusions
Subclinical astrocyte damage represented by increasing sGFAP levels rarely during inter-attack periods in individuals with NMOSD, while a certain degree of astrocyte damage occurred at the time of clinical attacks without exception and became not evident within 3 months. These results suggest that sGFAP can serve as a reliable biomarker of NMOSD activity.