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Plasma ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase-L1 (UCH-L1) level as a blood biomarker of neurological damage after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation

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Abstract

Several biofluid-based biomarkers for traumatic brain injury show promise for use in diagnosis and outcome prediction. In contrast, few studies have investigated biomarkers for non-traumatic brain injury. We focused on ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase-L1 (UCH-L1), which has been proposed as a screening tool for traumatic brain injury, and investigated whether the plasma UCH-L1 level could also be a useful biomarker in patients with non-traumatic brain injury. We measured UCH-L1 in 25 patients who had experienced neurological complications after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) and 22 control patients without any complications or graft-versus-host disease. Although UCH-L1 levels before HCT did not differ significantly (P = 0.053), levels after HCT were higher in patients with neurological complications compared with the control group (P < 0.001). At a UCH-L1 cutoff value of 0.072 ng/ml, sensitivity was 68.0% and specificity was 100%. The statistical power of UCH-L1 for neurological complications seemed to be higher than that of CT and comparable to that of MRI. Thus, increased levels of UCH-L1 might reflect the presence of neurological damage even in patients with non-traumatic brain injury. Further large cohort investigations are warranted.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the donors, patients, and physicians for their contributions. H.N. received grants from the Takeda Science Foundation and JSPS KAKENHI (JP21K07070).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Hematology, Jichi Medical University Saitama Medical Center, 1-847 Amanuma-cho Omiya-ku, Saitama, 330-8503, Japan

    Yosuke Okada, Hideki Nakasone, Kazuki Yoshimura, Masaharu Tamaki, Machiko Kusuda, Yuhei Nakamura, Masakatsu Kawamura, Shunto Kawamura, Junko Takeshita, Nozomu Yoshino, Yukiko Misaki, Ayumi Gomyo, Aki Tanihara, Shun-ichi Kimura, Shinichi Kako & Yoshinobu Kanda

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  1. Yosuke Okada
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  2. Hideki Nakasone
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  3. Kazuki Yoshimura
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  4. Masaharu Tamaki
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  5. Machiko Kusuda
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  6. Yuhei Nakamura
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  14. Shun-ichi Kimura
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  16. Yoshinobu Kanda
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Contributions

YO: designed the study, collected, and analyzed data, and wrote the manuscript. HN: designed the study, analyzed data, and wrote the manuscript. KY, MT, MK, YN, MK, SK, JT, NY, YM, AG, AT, SK and SK: collected clinical data. YK: advised on the methods, wrote the manuscript, and was responsible for the project.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yoshinobu Kanda.

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Conflict of interest

HN has received honoraria from Otsuka Pharmaceutical, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, Novartis, Takeda Pharmaceutical, Celgene, Janssen Pharmaceutical, Eisai, Chugai Pharmaceutical, Sanofi, Meiji Seika Pharma, and Nippon Shinyaku.

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Okada, Y., Nakasone, H., Yoshimura, K. et al. Plasma ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase-L1 (UCH-L1) level as a blood biomarker of neurological damage after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation. Int J Hematol 118, 340–346 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12185-023-03642-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12185-023-03642-7

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