Photo Credit: koto_feja
The following is a summary of “Serum neurofilament light chain predicts disease severity in axonal variants of acute immune neuropathies: A retrospective monocentric cohort study,” published in the November 2024 issue of Neurology by Afzali et al.
The prognostic utility of neurofilament light chain (NfL) in patients with immune-mediated polyradiculoneuropathies (IMPs) was explored.
Researchers conducted a retrospective study to assess the prognostic value of serum NfL concentrations in patients with IMP.
They analyzed baseline serum and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), NfL concentrations in 115 patients with IMP before treatment initiation and correlated these levels with clinical outcomes, including the F score and hospitalization duration.
The results showed that baseline serum and CSF-NfL concentrations were higher in acute inflammatory axonal polyradiculoneuropathy (AIAP) compared to other variants of IMP. In the cohort of AIAP, a positive correlation was found between baseline serum NfL concentrations, the F score, and hospitalization duration. Multivariate linear regression analysis confirmed that elevated serum NfL levels predicted poorer clinical outcomes. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis showed that a serum NfL cutoff value of 351 pg/mL predicted an F score greater than 3 in AIAP with 40% sensitivity and 81.8% specificity. Patients with AIAP and serum NfL levels above this threshold had longer hospital stays, extended by an average of 15 days.
They concluded that baseline serum NfL levels may serve as a useful marker for predicting prognosis in patients with AIAP, potentially guiding tailored treatment strategies.
Source: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ene.16539
